Farewell to Sonny Ramadhin - West Indies mystery spinner who ran through England

Sonny Ramadhin, who has died in Lancashire aged 92, was the most famous of all mystery-spinners.

From the 1890s batsmen had gradually learned to distinguish between the leg-break and googly. Ramadhin mixed his legbreaks with offbreaks, and was harder to fathom as the difference lay in a flick of his fingers, whereas the googly bowler depends on a turn of his wrist - slightly easier to discern.

England had never seen anything like Ramadhin when the West Indian tourists arrived in 1950. Never has novelty been so effective, as Ramadhin, aged 21, ran through the counties and England alike, with apparently little more than a whirl of his right arm and a flick of those fingers.

In 1950 Ramadhin topped the West Indian bowling averages with the staggering figures of 135 first-class wickets at 14.88 off more than 1,000 overs, conceding fewer than two an over in the process. It was soon noticed that he always bowled with the long sleeves of his shirt buttoned down, and some bewildered England players put it about that he threw, but he was never no-balled, unlike his English contemporary spinner, Tony Lock.

Once the summer had warmed up, Ramadhin took 11 wickets against Somerset, 10 against Leicestershire, eight for 15 in one innings against Gloucestershire - and 26 wickets at only 23 each in the four Tests against England. Batsmen who were not bowled by his offbreak were stumped charging his legbreak. Only Len Hutton could keep him at bay. “Fantastic player,” Ramadhin told the Guardian in 2020. “He never picked me but he played me off the wicket.”

His partner Alf Valentine, a left-arm spinner from Jamaica, was marginally more effective in the Tests, marginally less so in first-class matches overall. “This West Indian couple,”