Black History Month: John Holder

JOHN Wakefield HOLDER (1968-1972)
Born 19 March 1945, St George Barbados
Right Hand lower order Batter, Right Arm Fast-Medium Bowler

47 First-Class Matches
Batting: 374 runs, average 10.68
Highest Score 33 v Sussex at Hove 1971
Bowling: 139 wickets, average 24.56, Five five-fors, One ten wicket match haul
Best Bowling Innings 7-79 v Gloucestershire at Gloucester 1972
Catches: 12

40 Limited Overs Matches
Bowling: 46 wickets, average 26.36
Highest Figures 3-18 v Essex at Basingstoke 1972

In 1968 the English authorities relaxed the rules on counties signing overseas players, permitting them for the first time to offer contracts to current Test cricketers without requiring them to give up their Test place. Hampshire immediately approached the West Indian batter Clive Lloyd but beaten to his signature by Lancashire they moved instead to sign South African Barry Richards. Elsewhere in the late 1960s, a number of prominent West Indian cricketers began playing English county cricket including Keith Boyce (Essex), Garry Sobers (Notts), Vanburn Holder (Worcestershire), Rohan Kanhai and Lance Gibbs at Warwickshire - soon to be joined by Alvin Kallicharan and Deryck Murray - John Shepherd & (from 1970) Bernard Julien (Kent). Following Hampshire’s Roy Marshall, one of the last white West Indian county cricketers Geoff Greenidge played at Sussex, while only Yorkshire for some years to come declined to look overseas for their players.

In addition to these Test cricketers, a number of good Caribbean players saw opportunities to play in England and qualified by residence. They included Tony Cordle (Glamorgan, from Barbados), Wycliffe Phillips (Gloucestershire, Barbados) Harry Latchman (Middlesex, Jamaica), Carlton Forbes (Nottinghamshire, Jamaica), Ron Headley (Worcestershire, Jamaica) and from Barbados, John Holder at Hampshire.

John arrived in Britain from Barbados where he was born and raised in a village with the delightful name of Superlative, in the Parish of St George. This was where John first played cricket in the backyard or the road, then at the age of 11 he went to Combermere School once the classroom of West Indian greats Sir Frank Worrell and Wes Hall. Here he began to play organised cricket, learning mostly from watching the great fast bowlers Hall, Griffith and Roy Gilchrist, while the school team played in the first division of the men’s league playing against leading West Indian cricketers. After leaving school he played for The Central Club which had once been exclusively for white players in what still a relatively elitist and segregated social world.

Many of the club cricketers in Barbados would go on to play for the island side in the Shell Shield, a competition which Barbados won frequently but John never played for Barbados because he was attracted by the prospect of employment with London Transport. He arrived at Heathrow in November 1963, suitably dressed for a warm afternoon back home. It was a rude introduction, but he settled in London and soon started working on the Underground. More importantly he also began to play London club cricket for the Caribbean Cricket Club and his performances there led to an invitation to play for the BBC side - the BBCCC - where his performances impressed Dr CB (Bertie) Clark who had played for Barbados and West Indies before the war and then in England for Essex and Northamptonshire. He knew Roy Marshall who would captain Hampshire from 1966 and after a conversation between them, John Holder came to Hampshire.

There is a slight anomaly in the tale of John Holder’s first game at Hampshire because his future team-mate Andy Murtagh who wrote John’s biography (2016), tells of him being invited to play for the 2^nd XI in May 1966 and to the surprise of his new team-mates without a trial or attending any nets – what is more, that match against Somerset 2^nd XI at Wells was rained-off. But Cricket Archive records how John had played one 2^nd XI game the previous season in July 1965 against Gloucestershire 2^nd XI when he bowled seven overs in the match, taking 0-16 against a line-up that included a couple of promising young South Africans Mike Procter and his future team-mate Barry Richards.

Whatever the true tale, John certainly was there in 1966 and nicknamed by his new team-mates ‘Hod’ played a full season with a team that included at times Leo Harrison, Danny Livingstone, Jimmy Gray, Alan Wassell, Dennis Baldry and Mike Barnard from Hampshire’s 1961 Champions and David Turner, Richard Lewis, and Trevor Jesty from their next ones in 1973. The following season, 1967 was much the same for John at a time with Hampshire looking to find successors to their Championship-winning opening bowlers – ‘Butch’ White (32 years old in 1968) and especially Derek Shackleton who retired from full-time cricket after the 1968 season when he was 44. In June 1968, John made his first-class debut v Somerset at Portsmouth, taking 5-96 (including Australian Greg Chappell) and 2-29. In that first season, he generally replaced the injured White and took 18 wickets at 26.72. After few matches in 1969, he took 55 wickets in 1970, then 19 in 1971 and 40 in 1972, including his best innings return of 7-79 at Gloucester (13-128 in the match) and a hat-trick v Kent at Southampton. In those five seasons his bowling average never exceeded 28, but Murtagh’s biography revealed, with photographic evidence, how his open-chested action, anticipating fellow Bajan Malcolm Marshall, was altered by county coaches to the ‘classic’ side-on, after which he experienced problems with no balls and wides. He was also struggling with back problems which was perhaps a consequence of the change.

Despite a career record of 139 first-class wickets at 24.80 and 46 limited-overs wickets at 26.36, his Hampshire career ended at Derby in August 1972 with five wicketless overs in the first innings; when Derbyshire followed-on drawing the game, he did not bowl and when the players assembled at the start of the 1973 season John was not there. In the interim the West Indies Cricket Board had invited him along with his Hampshire team-mate Gordon Greenidge to return home for trials for the forthcoming Test series. Sadly John never took part in those trials because his back was so bad, and he realised that his life as a full-time professional cricketer was over.

In his biography Andy Murtagh suggested “John was possibly the most popular member of the playing staff” and that, "in his pomp, when everything clicked, with his back not playing up and his run-up sorted out, it was not fanciful at all to compare John Holder to the great Michael Holding." But he added: "Consistency eluded him. His bowling would fizzle, ignite again, then splutter once more… He never lost his good humour and his cheerful demeanour but you could sense the frustration and see the confidence ebbing away."

John stayed in Barbados in 1973 and played some club cricket for the first division side Carlton CC. Reflecting on his time at Hampshire, he told Andy Murtagh “I had seven very happy years there” but while back in Barbados he had a call from a friend in England who played in the Lancashire League. As a result, in 1974 John returned to England, moved to Lancashire, and was the professional for Rawtenstall through that season. In 23 matches he took 34 wickets at 20.82. He enjoyed life in the north of England and made his home there.

In the following winter he took a coaching job in South Africa where he was accorded the status of ‘honorary white man’ under the repressive Apartheid regime. It was an ‘education’ for John but not a comfortable experience, although he played one final first-class match for Western Province. Back in England he spent a couple of years playing as the club professional for Royston CC but he missed the culture and context of the full-time English professional game and in the 1980s he became a first-class umpire in county and then international cricket. From 1982-2009 in the domestic game he stood in 421 first-class matches and 449 List A Matches, while from 1988-2001 he stood in 11 Test Matches, (plus five as a TV Umpire), 19 ODIs and from 2005-2009 in six Women’s ODIs.

In July 2001 John stood as umpire in the second Test between England and Australia at Lord’s, the greatest of cricketing occasions. He received a ‘good’ report from England’s captain Mike Atherton and a ‘very good’ one from the victorious captain Steve Waugh. But in the autumn of that year when the English Cricket Board (ECB) published the list of future Test Match umpires John’s name was not there; he was dropped, never given an explanation and never stood in a Test again. His final first-class match was at the Oval in September 2009 but a week earlier he stood in the match between Hampshire and Nottinghamshire at Hampshire’s Rose Bowl, where the Hampshire fans gave him an appropriately fond farewell. He has continued to appear on the ground for the reunions of Hampshire’s former players. The former Yorkshire cricketer Barry Leadbeater told Murtagh that ‘The game would invariably run smoothly” when umpiring with John, “it was without doubt a strong relationship … which helped to foster a strong work ethic on the field … John was a very strong and competent umpire”. (339)

In later years, John became well-known in the media as an authority on ‘difficult’ umpiring decisions, appearing regularly on BBC’s Test Match Special in a series “Ask the Umpire” and producing a book of many umpiring challenges, You Are the Umpire. He was also a member of MCC’s Laws Working Party and worked internationally as Regional Umpire’s Performance Manager for the ICC, travelling to Buenos Aires, Florida and Holland to work as a mentor to their umpires.

In the conclusion to his biography Andy Murtagh asked John whether he had ever suffered from racial discrimination and he answered no, saying “Cricket has been a wonderful vehicle for the advancement of black people in a white man’s world … I think the process of equal opportunities is unstoppable” (349). “Hand on my heart I cannot say that I have ever been disadvantaged because of my colour”.

Despite this, through the 2020s reports emerged from various cricketing centres in the UK about the impact of racism – notably in Yorkshire and Scotland. When the issue first became prominent in the media, The Guardian (December 2020) reported that John was suing the ECB on the grounds of racial discrimination. Twelve months later John told the Black newspaper The Voice “All I want is a level playing field for everyone. The present system is way too heavily in favour of white people” (December 2021). In that interview, going back to his last Test as an umpire – still the only Black British umpire in Test cricket – he suggested he was dropped as an umpire after raising an issue of suspected ball tampering with the England captain. “I was penalised for doing my job properly”.