On a similar theme to my cricket Popes effort earlier in the week, I give you a Valentine’s Day offering. Probably the most unromantic you will find on this particular day, five players called ‘Valentine’ have played international cricket. Here they are:
The most famous of them all was Alf Valentine, who played 36 Tests for the West Indies between 1950 and 1961/2. He forged a partnership with Sonny Ramadhin to help the West Indies to their first win in England in 1950 – a victory built around a spin threat, rather than the battery of pace bowlers for which they would later be renowned. Eight times he took five wickets in an innings, ending his career with 139 wickets at 30.32. In first-class cricket, mainly for Jamaica, he took 475 wickets at 26.21 in 125 appearances.
Bryan Valentine was born in 1908, representing several first-class teams including Kent, Cambridge University, Gentlemen of England and South of England and finally seven Tests between 1933 and 1939. He finished with the impressive average of 64.85 with two centuries and a half-century. If his international career was disrupted by World War II, he went on to captain Kent between 1946 and 1948, scoring 18,306 runs at 30.15 in 199 matches.
Bryan’s sister, Carol Valentine, played one Test for England against Australia in Brisbane in 1934. Indeed, this was the first ever women’s Test match. Batting at number 11, she failed to score a run, did not bowl in Australia’s first innings but took one wicket in their second innings as England claimed a nine-wicket win. She played for several teams between 1929 and 1935.
Canadian John Valentine was a member of their 1979 World Cup squad. He played all three One-Day Internationals, and they were comfortably beaten by Pakistan, England and Australia. Left-armer Valentine’s contributions were the wicket of Majid Khan against Pakistan, three not out and Mike Brearley’s wicket against England and the wicket of Rick Darling against Australia for an ODI bowling average of 22 and an economy rate of 3.47. He had even more success in the ICC Trophy, playing six matches and taking nine wickets at 15.88 against Malaysia, Bangladesh, Denmark, Fiji, Bermuda and Sri Lanka to help Canada qualify for the World Cup itself.
Our final Valentine is Vincent Valentine, like Alf a Jamaican and West Indian international but no relation. He played two Tests against England in 1933, scoring 35 runs and taking one wicket as a right-arm fast medium bowler. His first match was drawn and the second resulted in a heavy defeat. He never played for the West Indies again and had limited success for Jamaica, taking 49 wickets at 40.40 between 1932 and 1938.