In 20 Test cricket matches for the West Indies in the 1960s, Jackie Hendriks established himself among the leading wicketkeepers of that era.

But for injuries, misfortune and quirky selectors, he undoubtedly would have played much more for theWest Indies.

Contemporaries described Hendriks as being equally proficient against pace and spin. As a measure of his excellence, statisticians record that on three occasions when the opposition amassed over 500 runs in Tests, Hendriks kept wicket without conceding a bye.

As a batsman, he averaged 18.62 and is the first to concede that he underachieved.

Hendriks, who was captain of Jamaica in the 1960s, later went on to lead the Jamaica Cricket Board as well as serve the West Indies Cricket Board in various capacities and the International Cricket Council (ICC) as a match referee.

Today, the mentally sharp 82-year-old continues to watch cricket on television and the odd game at Sabina Park. He stands ready to share his vast knowledge and experiences with those wishing to learn.

Born in a middle class environment at Lyndhurst Road in Kingston on December 21, 1933, John Leslie Hendriks got his early education at a private preparatory school, Butler’s, opposite Holy Cross Church in Half Way Tree.

The way Hendriks remembers it he had little or no interest in cricket in those early years, though his father, Egerton Hendriks, a member of Kensington Cricket Club played the game and sought to ignite his interest.

“He tried his best with me with cricket and I resisted,” Hendriks recalled with a chuckle.

All that changed when he started his high school education at Wolmer’s Boys, his father’s alma mater. There, the young Hendriks fell in love with the game.

It helped considerably that Gerry Alexander, a future West Indies captain and wicketkeeper/batsman, was a senior when Hendriks arrived and his House captain at that.

Soon Hendriks became captain of the Under-12s and quickly learnt lifelong lessons about acceptable conduct in cricket.

Having dismissed the opposition for 35 in one house match, the team led by Hendriks then batted for a long time, aiming to earn house points with a big score. Hendriks himself top scored with 95. “I was feeling very proud of myself for getting five house points,” Hendriks recalled.

But the next day, Alexander reprimanded him. “I understand you batted on and on and you got out at 95 having bowled them out for 35. It’s just not cricket and I am taking away the house points from you,” Alexander said.

For Hendriks it was like being “drenched by a bucket of cold water” but it taught him that in playing the game he must respect opponents and show regard for ethical standards.

Another wake-up call came a few years later, when he was keeping wicket in a school’s trial match and threw the ball high in celebration of a wicket. At the end of the session, his headmaster, Reg Bunting — an outstanding sportsman who had come to Wolmer’s having been one of the finest amateur goalkeepers in England — called him over.

“Hendriks, do you want to play cricket for Wolmer’s?” asked Bunting. “Yes Sir,” replied Hendriks. To which the headmaster said: “Well If I see you throw the ball up again you won’t”.

According to Hendriks, “from that day I never threw the ball up again until many, many years later when we (West Indies) went to India 58/59”.

Such were the principles that became ingrained in the young Hendriks. So that today he cringes at what he considers ill-mannered and unprincipled behaviour on a cricket field.

Cricket was his first love but Hendriks recalled that at Wolmer’s in the 1940s he and other boys were engaged in most sports, including athletics, hockey, football, rifle shooting, and tennis. He was also part of the cadet force rising to the rank of Lance Corporal.

The teenaged Hendriks drew a line on boxing. “Boxing was the one thing I decided I wasn’t doing, I wasn’t interested in having my face lacerated,” he said.

As a cricketer, he became attracted to wicketkeeping at an early age. It started when he was playing backyard cricket and used a softball glove to catch balls behind the stumps. Fascination grew when he visited Sabina Park to see outstanding wicketkeepers including the Englishman Godfrey Evans. “He (Evans) was like a virtual dynamo, bouncing around, first ball to the last…” said Hendriks.

He developed a liking for keeping wicket to spinners and there were a few who helped him to hone his skill at an early age.

The first was the off-spinner Reggie Scarlett, later to play for Jamaica and the West Indies. Hendriks first came across Scarlett during training at Wolmer’s.

“One evening we were practising on a concrete pitch up on the north side of the school and it was getting late and all the bowlers were a bit tired. I saw this little lad hanging on to the net so I turned and said to him ‘sonny, can you bowl? and he said ‘yes I can sir’. So, he went and bowled, and there was Reggie turning the ball a foot and a half on this concrete pitch… keeping wicket to him was quite an interesting proposition because he spun the ball so much,” said Hendriks.

He recalled a game against St George’s College, when an immaculately dressed right-hand batsman shouldered arms to his first ball from Scarlett pitched a foot and half outside off stump. The ball broke back to hit off stump.

“Reggie collapsed on the ground laughing, which I thought was very poor,” said Hendriks. “Scarlett and Hendriks quickly progressed to Kingston Cricket Club, based at Sabina Park, to join forces with another youngster who was spinning the ball big. That was Alf Scott, later to play for Jamaica and a single Test for the West Indies. A legspinner, Scott played Senior Cup before he played for his school, St George’s, at senior level.

At Kingston, Hendriks’ education in cricket grew by leaps and bounds with the elders at the club, including captain Johnny Groves showing “great interest” in the youngsters. A landmark occasion was whenWest Indies opener Allan Rae returned from the tour of Australia in 1951.

“Johnny Groves got all the young players together and marched us out to Palisadoes Airport and we lined up and Allan went down the line like Royalty,” recalled Hendriks.

That was the start of a long association with the strong-willed Rae, among the foremost administrators in West Indies cricket history and whom Hendriks described as a “hard taskmaster, if you didn’t do things right he would let you know”.

Having gained a reputation as an outstanding wicketkeeper, Hendriks made the Jamaica team in 1954, against the touring MCC, after first choice ‘keeper Allie Binns broke his finger in the first ‘colony match’ prior to the Test at Sabina.

Playing in the second ‘colony match’ Hendriks recalled having a fairly good game. Yet, in those days when opportunities for first class cricket came few and far between, and selectors were even more of a law unto themselves than they are today, opportunities for Jamaica were scarce.

He had a first-hand view of eccentric selectors during regional trials in Trinidad to select the squad for the West Indies tour of England in 1957. Despite few opportunities for Jamaica, his reputation earned him a place among five wicketkeepers at the Trials. Clairmonte Depeiza, who had starred against Australia in 1955, decided there were too many ‘keepers and took a contract in the Scottish professional leagues.

Hendriks’s primary recollection of the Trials was that it wasn’t pleasant. “It was a very unpleasant atmosphere, because it was like dog eat dog …”

To make the situation more peculiar, “John Goddard who was the captain of the team never played, Dennis Atkinson (allrounder) never played. They were there in Trinidad but they never played…”

Hendriks had an especially heavy workload. “I was the only player that never got a bat, I was the only player that kept wicket for both sides in one of the two trial games, I was the only player that kept wicket to (Roy) Gilchrist (by far the fastest bowler) and got a dislocated finger in that last trial match …”

When the squad was selected, Alexander was chosen as the specialist wicketkeeper with the up and coming batsman Rohan Kanhai as his deputy. Incredibly Kanhai was asked to keep wicket in the first three Tests of the tour of England, before the specialist Alexander was called on.

Six decades later, Hendriks still remembers the entire episode with displeasure.

“It was terribly disappointing. I didn’t have any reason to hold it back. It was very disappointing,” said Hendriks.

That and an earlier experience in Guyana in which he was left out of the Jamaica team in the regional territorial competition, left Hendriks to feel that he had no future in regional and international competition.

He resigned himself to playing Senior Cup cricket.

Hence his surprise and disbelief when while watching tennis at the St Andrew Club one afternoon on April 1, 1958 (All Fools Day) he was told that he had been selected to tour India later that year.

“I said ‘yeah, yeah, yeah All Fools Day’ but the fellow took out a thing called the Daily Express (afternoon newspaper) and he said ‘there you are see, it has been announced you going as second wicketkeeper…’” recalled Hendriks.

He was overjoyed. Alexander was the captain leading a young team including Conrad Hunte, Rohan Kanhai, Joe Solomon, Lance Gibbs, Wes Hall, Gilchrist, Chadwick Taylor and Willie Rodriquez. By then Garfield Sobers, also very young, was a star having set a new world record 365 against Pakistan in February of that year.

(To come: Hendriks speaks of experiences in India, Pakistan, Australia and England; his assessment of the great West Indies players of the day; keeping wicket to Sonny Ramadhin; being hit by fast bowler Graeme McKenzie in 1965; his view of West Indies cricket today)