In the spring of 1929 Learie Constantine signed a contract with Nelson Cricket Club in the Lancashire League — the first West Indian Test cricketer to take a full professional contract in English league cricket. He stayed with Nelson until 1937 and inspired a wave of Caribbean professionals to follow.
Constantine had played for the West Indies in their first Test in June 1928. He had a Test record (89 runs in 6 innings at 14.83) that did not match his all-round county form. Lancashire League clubs, looking for a marquee professional, made him an offer he could not refuse.
Constantine had been recommended to Nelson by Sir Leonard Crawford, who had toured the Caribbean and seen him play. The Lancashire League at that time paid better than English county cricket and offered Sundays off — a critical concession for a player whose Test career still had to be planned around English summers. The contract was for 800 pounds a year, more than three times the average county professional's pay.
Constantine joined Nelson in April 1929. In his first season he scored 820 league runs at 40 and took 95 wickets at 9.92, helping Nelson to win the league. Across nine seasons (1929-37) Nelson won the Lancashire League seven times — the most successful run by any league club in any decade. Constantine's contract was extended four times; by 1937 he was the highest-paid cricketer in the world.
The symbolic effect was as great as the cricketing one. Constantine became the first internationally famous black cricketer to live and play in the north of England as a member of a white community. He fought a successful 1944 race-discrimination case against the Imperial Hotel in London. He was knighted in 1962, became Trinidad and Tobago's first High Commissioner to Britain, was appointed to the House of Lords in 1969, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Spring 1929: Constantine signs for Nelson, 800 pounds per year
1929 season: 820 runs at 40, 95 wickets at 9.92
Nelson win Lancashire League 1929-37 (seven times in nine seasons)
1937: contract not renewed; Constantine moves to Rochdale
1944: wins discrimination case against the Imperial Hotel, London
1928
Constantine plays West Indies' first Test at Lord's
Spring 1929
Signs for Nelson Cricket Club
1929-37
Nine seasons at Nelson; seven Lancashire League titles
1937
Moves to Rochdale
1962
Knighted; later first Trinidad High Commissioner to UK
“I came to Nelson as a cricketer; I left it as a man.”
Constantine remained at Nelson until 1937. Other West Indian, Indian and South African Test players — Headley, Sobers, Worrell, Weekes, Wesley Hall, Wes Hall — followed his example into the Lancashire and Yorkshire leagues. The migration of Caribbean professionals to England's industrial north was a foundation of West Indian Test cricket through the rest of the century.
Constantine's 1929 contract with Nelson was the first major professional contract for a West Indian cricketer in England and the founding act of a Caribbean-professional tradition that would shape both English league cricket and the West Indies Test side until the 1980s.
Constantine became the first cricketer to be knighted (1962) for his off-field public service. The Nelson signing in 1929 is regarded as the founding moment of the Caribbean-professional tradition in English cricket.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.