Martin Chandler |
The name O’Neill Gordon ‘Cawley’ Smith has fascinated me my whole life, but I can’t remember how it started. It was probably a story my father told me, and I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of ‘What could he have done if he hadn’t met his untimely end?’
His lack of real knowledge beyond the basics of his Test career and sadly his early death was a source of frustration for some time, but I thought life was easy enough until I read Garry Sobers’ 2002 publication. My AutobiographyThe first chapter of this book is a heartfelt sermon commemorating a friend lost in a tragic car accident in 1959.
So it was only natural that when I was looking for a place to vent my thoughts on cricket and cricketers a few years later, one of the first subjects I wanted to write about was Colley Smith.
There are a lot of books written about Sobers, and I found them, as well as books by or about Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell, Clyde Walcott, and various stories about West Indies cricket and the series Collie appeared in. But what I couldn’t find was a biography of Collie himself, and I knew there was one, not least because it was briefly mentioned on his Wikipedia page.
I couldn’t find any reference to the book. happy warrior This piece by Kenneth Chaplin was at Padwick’s. Cricket References. Padwick’s first edition came out in 1977, and an updated and expanded second edition came out seven years later. For a moment I thought it was one of those books that was written but never actually published, but then I saw a copy. It was in a dealer’s shop, but it was in poor condition, not substantial, and even if I could overcome those concerns, it was priced far above what I was prepared to pay for a cricket book at the time.
Until 2012, I had not seen another copy. happy warrior So, based on my research into every mention of Collie I could find, I wrote the article in this form in March 2012. I was pleased with the results, and given the beauty of everything being posted online, I figured I could probably work on it when the book was published.
Over the next 12 years, I continued to search for the book. I regularly asked dealers, more in hope than expectation, if they had copies, and the answer was always ‘no.’ I never saw a copy on a dealer’s website, in a catalog, or at auction. I also searched eBay every day, and used various search sites regularly in the hope that someone somewhere in the world would have a copy.
I was so obsessed with this search that I asked everyone in the Caribbean to keep an eye out for copies for me. Over the years, I have dealt with several clients with Jamaican roots, offering them a huge discount on their fees if they would supply copies for me. I have made similar offers to everyone I know who has even the slightest connection to the Caribbean, and of course, these requests for help never came to fruition.
At one stage I even managed to get hold of the email address of the author, Kenneth Chaplin, who is sadly no longer with us. To be fair to him, Chaplin did respond to my email, but he simply said, unhelpfully, that the book was ‘long out of print’ and that he ‘can’t help you find a copy’. I asked him a few follow-up questions about who published the book, how many copies were printed, etc., but perhaps understandably, I never heard from him again.
I have often pondered why the book was so rare. It was not a limited edition, but I admit that the term limited edition is misleading in the sense that all books are printed in limited numbers. But the interest in Colley was enormous. Tens of thousands of Jamaicans attended his funeral, so there must have been demand. I can also admit that many of those who bought copies were not cricket enthusiasts or ‘book lovers’, but surely some copies were kept.
It is also understandable that in 1960 the world was a much larger place and news of the book’s publication may not have spread widely. However, it is certain that some of the many friends Colley made during his two seasons at Burnley in the Lancashire League knew of its existence and passed along a few copies.
Well, it seems at least one person did. A few weeks ago, I came home from work and was looking for something to occupy my mind before the 7pm news, so I checked out eBay and, to my surprise, there was a copy of the book. Happy warrior, And since it had a ‘Buy It Now’ price written on it, I didn’t have to stress about the auction, so of course I paid that price.
So a few days later, a copy of Colley Smith’s biography arrived at my door. The most amazing thing about the sale was that, as far as I can remember, the original listing had been posted at least eight hours before I saw it. Am I really the only cricket-obsessed collector? happy warrior?
One of the characteristics of collectors, and one that I think puts us firmly on the spectrum, is that the thrill of acquisition conquers everything. So I owned: happy warrior It took me six weeks to actually think about reading that article, and I did it last Saturday morning when I had nothing else to do. Would it have made a big difference to the article I wrote years ago? I figured I had to figure it out for myself.
It took me less than an hour to read 62 pages. As far as I know, the author passed away in 2019 at the age of 90. He was a professional journalist, not primarily a sports reporter, but if you google his name, you will find that he was a highly respected figure who served as a spokesman for four Jamaican prime ministers. His main contribution to sports was as a soccer referee, apparently a FIFA-recognized referee for 18 years. I think happy warrior It is his only book.
I wondered if perhaps the book was just not very good, and that its poor quality contributed to why it was so difficult to understand. I was certainly wrong, because the book is well written and sheds much light on Colley’s upbringing, his religious values, and his family life. Letters he wrote to his mother and fiancée in England are included in the text to further illuminate his character.
But as for my character, I am happy to say, I have nothing to change. I have acquired all of Kohli’s cricketing achievements elsewhere. But if I were writing this feature today, I might have mentioned that I finally found out where the name ‘Kohli’ came from. The reason is that it was a nickname given to Kohli by his grandmother, named after her servant Conchita, and it was the name given to Kohli by his grandmother and it stayed with him for the rest of his life.
One little surprise is happy warrior There is no mention of a ‘special relationship’ with Sobers, but I suspect Chaplin did not speak to any of Collie’s West Indies teammates, apart from Gerry Alexander, who provided the foreword. This book is a case of one Jamaican paying homage to another, so perhaps that explains it.
Needless to say, I was thrilled to finally find a copy of the book I had been actively searching for for nearly 20 years. Just as I had finally succeeded in doing so, something had disappeared from my life, and I needed to find something else to apply that same energy to. What could it be?
