Saluting the great Maurice Foster at 75
HE turned 75 on May 9 of this year, but don’t remind Maurice Linton Churchill Foster of that fact.
Foster’s everlasting boyish conduct will make many feel like he has not spent that many years on planet Earth.
Fos, as he is known by so many in his native land and globally, remains one of the great Jamaican talents that to this day continues to shine in his latest professional arena — broadcasting.
As fit as ever still, he has represented Jamaica in three sports — his beloved cricket, table tennis and golf — leaving his mark on all three and also logging outstanding statistics in other areas of endeavour, including sales, from which he managed to keep himself financially viable, and secondarily, running sports talk shows that have given him the additional fillip to share his knowledge with the wider world.
But it is the game of cricket that most know of his prowess, from the days of Wolmer’s Boys’ School. We often heard that he wished he had attended Kingston College, but even after countless attempts to attain verification from the horse’s mouth, that has just not come about.
His glittering achievements as a schoolboy at Wolmer’s at a time when he also played hockey, table tennis, and Manning Cup football for that school as a forward will go down as among the greatest of all time. Century after century he would score in cricket, having had his early baptism as a boy growing up in his home village of Retreat in western St Mary, where he was born, playing with coconut bows as they called it then. So good was this rare talent, that he made the Jamaica team while still at Wolmer’s in the early 1960s, although he was not off to a brilliant start.
That came after repeated broad-chested performances against all teams with the exception of KC; when the Wolmer’s squad had some of the best, among them Milton Powell, Michael “Mickey” West, and believe it or not, now politician and lawyer KD Knight — the Sheriff whose colleagues often teased him afterwards that as a fast bowler, his run-up to the wicket was quicker than his actual delivery. In one memorable match against KC at KC’s North Street location in 1962, the ‘star side’ Wolmer’s arrived with Foster as the ‘big bat’ in fine form with centuries in his bank account leading up to that clash. However, it was not to be his day, as after Wolmer’s were sent in, a third ball snorter from Cyril Buchanan (now deceased) reared at Foster, who decided to protect his face by fending off the lifter into the safe hands of Payton Fuller at gully. There was a pitch invasion (in the first over at that) as the purples celebrated and went on to win the match and the title.
Foster, as an opener and later middle-order batsman, played for Jamaica until 1978, bowing out at a time when he had much more to offer. He was twice named captain.
Making the West Indies team against England in that country during the 1968-1969 tour, he played 14 Tests all told, although it could have been more had there not been the bug of insularity and unexplainable selection choices.
Fos, who also took the field in two One-Day Internationals, had to wait until the tour of the West Indies by India in 1971 to experience his most bitter-sweet experience of his career. He fell for 99 in the fifth Test match at Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, when he played on to Abid Ali for 99 in the first innings, batting at number seven in a team innings which saw centuries from Trinidadian Charlie Davis and the great Barbadian Garfield Sobers. Tears flowed, but he had made a statement.
Two years later his big moment came. Having to agonisingly play second fiddle to his colleague Lawrence George Rowe, who sparkled with 214 and 100 not out in his debut Test, the first against New Zealand at Sabina Park in 1972, Foster came up trumps in the first Test in 1973 to plunder the Australian attack in scoring 125, batting in partnership with Rohan Kanhai — his only Test century. Two other Jamaicans — Easton “Bull” McMorris and Robert Samuels — also recorded solitary Test hundreds of 125.
Fos played his last Test against Australia in 1978. He has always joked that he is the man responsible for the emergence of Antiguan Viv Richards as a world beater in cricket. Fos was selected for the West Indies tour of India in 1974, but turned that down for “personal” reasons, his first wife at the time giving him an ultimatum that he needed to spend more time with his family, or else… It was then that Fos opted out of the tour, Viv was chosen as the replacement, and history took charge in rewriting the scripts. For good or bad, Fos’s marriage ended in divorce.
Many felt that that was the turning point in his life, as with his capacity to play spin bowling well … and seeing that India had the best spinners at the time … he would have made his name in that Asian country.
Fos had at the end of his first-class career scored 6,731 first-class runs at an average of 45.17, including 13 centuries — achieved in the 10-year period 1967 to 1977 — and a best of 234 for Jamaica against Guyana at Jarrett Park in 1977 when he left the nightclub at 5:30 in the morning to start his innings five hours later. Bowling his slower stuff, which never ever turned, his best returns were five for 65 against Guyana in 1971.
He always credited table tennis for the sharp reflexes that he had. From a family of stars in the sport, Fos shared the spotlight with his brother, the late Dave Foster, and sister Joy, who holds the record in the Guinness Book of Records for being the youngest national female champion at age eight. Apart from Jamaican titles, Fos was also a West Indies champion.
He got on well with most West Indies cricketers and in particular forged a friendly alliance with Antiguan, Leeward Islander and West Indies great Andy Roberts, who would pick him up at the airport whenever Jamaica played the Leewards in Antigua and go on their own merry way. One night they were out for several hours, joking and having fun, Foster drinking the only carbonated fluid that he is comfortable with — Pepsi — and dancing in his own style. By next morning, Jamaica were batting against the Leewards and as Fos came out to bat, it was Roberts who held the ball, having just claimed a wicket. A screaming bouncer greeted the Jamaican, first ball, that clearly shook him up. At the end of the over he walked across to Roberts and said to him: “Wa dat for man? We out last night good good and you nearly tek off me face this morning”, to which Roberts responded. “Churchill (as he called Fos) ‘that was last night. This is now. This is serious business.”
Always wearing a smile, and with an infectuous laugh that would even transform Vladimir Putin, nothing ever bothered Fos. Some of his friends would even say that no matter if he offended someone, there is no way that anyone could hate him… that smile and the resounding laugh would change everything.
When he broke ground by being a part of the KLAS 89 FM Radio team that hosted the first daily sports talk show — Scoreboard — Fos would share his knowledge with his enthusiastic audience in his own inimical style. He would be, as the saying goes, in his ‘ackee’ when he went on outside broadcasts, particularly on the North Coast hotel circuit, or at Caymanas Park, where his knowledge of racing was as far away as that of his spanish.
One day in 2004 while the KLAS team was at Caymanas Park, the former Deputy Prime Minister Seymour “Foggy” Mullings emerged from one of the director’s box over the North Lounge and greeted him and other members of the broadcast team, as an interview with another Wolmerian, Jeffrey Mordecai was about to begin. Being a man who loved rakes, Fos immediately looked at the racing programme and saw a horse to be ridden by O’Neil Mullings in the next race, set to start in 10 minutes.
Seymour Mullings, who died on Wednesday, October 9, 2013, aged 82, had just returned from his role as Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States and marched off to the restroom to freshen up for the next race.
Foster postponed the Mordecai interview, looked again at jockey O’Neil Mullings’ name, and promptly went to the cashier to place his bet — a mere $200 in the win pool — without even calling the name of the horse which he could not pronounce.
There was a delay to the race, and Foster’s fit of perspiration did not go unnoticed — obviously worrying that he might well blow his precious and priceless $200.
After holding the horse off the pace, Mullings went for his whip at the turn for home with a shade over two furlongs to go, thumping the horse with anger in the process too. It was over in seconds and Foster’s leap towards the ceiling almost decapitated a head that was for years bereft of hair.
The horse paid $114 to win and Fos was, against his will, ordered to treat all the members of the broadcast team to drinks — his punishment for spending only $200 on a clear ‘outer’ that nonetheless had a chance.
He refused to spend another cent on any other horse for the day, even upon the intervention of veteran horse owner, then Member of Parliament Derrick Smith, and Mullings, with the latter remarking: “I can see that you are not really a racing man.
His name is attached to several anecdotes, many of which cannot be repeated publicly; and, being a known eater, he is still to confirm the truthfulness of a story in which he is said to have spread his large lunch on the lawn of one of England’s cricket grounds during the 1970s, only for a policeman to walk up to him and say: “Excuse me sir, But this is a no vending area.”
Now at Power 106 FM, Fos, who holds the national honour of Order of Distinction in the Officer and Commander classes, continues to contribute to his beloved country — the land that he decided to remain when offers to play in the United Kingdom’s county cricket championship and apartheid South Africa were thrown in his lap.