Cecil Wright: Tributes to cricket ace who played last game at 85

BBC News

02-04-2025

A Jamaican-born cricketer who made England his home and became a veteran of the Lancashire leagues before finally retiring at the age of 85 has died.Cecil Wright played his last match for Uppermill in September 2019 in a career that saw him take more than 7,000 wickets over six decades.Born in Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth, in 1933, the fast bowler played one first class game for Jamaica before moving to England in 1959, where he played semi-professionally in Lancashire alongside some of the greats of the game including Gary Sobers and Viv Richards.His daughter Cecile Wright, a retired BBC network radio producer, said: "He was my hero really - it sounds like a cliche but he really was."
The 91-year-old father-of-three died at home in Royton, Oldham on Sunday where he had been receiving palliative care from Dr Kershaw's Hospice.Ms Wright described his care there as "fantastic".
Ms Wright said her father, who was married to wife Enid for 60 years until she died three years ago, had become a "bit of a character" in the local area.She recalled how when she was out with him he was regularly stopped in the street.She said: "Someone would say 'alright Cec how're you doing?'"They would walk off and I would say, 'who's that?' and he would go, 'I've no idea'."I think so many people knew him because they had watched him play cricket."She also described how they were out together a couple of months before his death when a bus driver recognised him and told her watching her father play cricket had given him "hours of pleasure". Wright's career also saw him play for Crompton, Colne, Astley Bridge, and Walsden.
Last year he officially opened an exhibition entitled West Indians in the Lancashire Leagues at Old Trafford, home of Lancashire County Cricket Club.Former Lancashire captain John Abrahams, whose father Cec Abrahams played for Milnrow, said: "He was a friend of my dad. He was true gentleman."He was genuinely quick but also very innovative - he had one delivery which batters only saw very late."
'Never looked back'
Wright's only game for Jamaica was not a success as he bowled against a Barbados team that included cricket greats Wes Hall, Collie Smith and Seymour Nurse without taking a wicket.Yet he found life within Lancashire league cricket a happier hunting ground, and continued terrorising batsmen in his latter years as a wily medium pacer who could also handle the bat.He once recounted the time the late Sir Frank Worrell, a famous West Indies captain, gave him a piece of advice that he credited with changing his fortunes bowling in England."He said you're not in Jamaica anymore, you know. Up here, you're bowling in the mud," Wright said. "He told me how to go about bowling when it's wet, and I haven't looked back ever since."But to Ms Wright, and her siblings Courtney and Laura, he was "just our lovely dad". "Even up until recently - I'm 60 now - and I would go and see him and when I'd leave he would say 'ring me when you get home so I know you got home safe'."
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