Brathwaite, Jordan continue Combermere's rich legacy

The links, now split, remain strong.

Like 17 Test players before them, Chris Jordan and Kraigg Brathwaite took their first steps towards international cricket while at Combermere School on the outskirts of Bridgetown, capital of their native Barbados. Their careers have taken such divergent courses that they are now confronting each other on opposite sides in the current Test series that ends with the third match starting on Friday at Kensington Oval. For both, it is a venue they first came to know as teenagers.

Brathwaite, century-maker in the second Test in Grenada last week, opens the batting for West Indies; Jordan bowls quick and contributes runs down the order for England, who lead 1-0 after their nine-wicket win in Grenada.

A prolific scorer at every level, Brathwaite made his first-class debut for Barbados at 16 while still at Combermere; he was in the Test team two years later, against Pakistan in St Kitts. Friday's is his 20th Test; Grenada's was his fourth hundred.

It is the eighth Test for Jordan, at 26, four years Brathwaite's senior. In his five years at Combermere, he was Barbados' most talented young all-round cricketer*, scoring 208 in an inter-school match, and a penetrative fast bowler, before joining his family in London. Jordan shared classrooms with a Combermere product who is even more famous and significantly wealthier than either him or Brathwaite. At school she was just plain Robyn Fenty, now better globally known as superstar singer Rihanna.

The relocation was initiated by the impressions he made, first on former England batsman Bill Athey during a tour of Barbados by Dulwich College and subsequently on Surrey coach Nadeem Shahid.

Athey, the Dulwich coach, arranged a scholarship to the London public school for Jordan, then 16; Shahid beat other counties for his signature in 2007 based his exploits for Dulwich. Underachievement and reported disenchantment at Surrey prompted Jordan to switch in 2013 to Sussex where his potential finally flourished, leading to selection for England last season.

The British passport of his mother, Rosita*, qualified the young Bajan as a non-overseas player. All the while, Brathwaite was accumulating runs for Barbados with his Chanderpaul-like concentration and patience.

When Jordan represented England for the first time in last year's T20 matches before his home crowd at Kensington Oval, one newspaper described him as "the one who got away". Even though he had to be designated as an overseas recruit to keep his England options open, the Bajan public felt that, with a little more effort from Barbados and West Indies, he might not have got away. As a parting shot, he finished his second and final season with Barbados in 2013 with what remain his best figures, 7 for 43.

There is another Combermere connection in the equation. A second player with one of the island's most common surnames, Carlos Brathwaite, is in the West Indies squad of 14 for the series. He played under Jordan's captaincy while they were at school together and in Barbados' U-19 team. A strapping seam bowler and ball-beating batsman, he awaits his chance at Test cricket.

Jordan and the Brathwaites maintain Combermere's rich cricketing legacy. The names of 15 West Indies Test cricketers, and two for England (Gladstone Small was briefly in the age-group team before heading north, aged 14) were initially noted in Combermere scorebooks.

They include some of the greatest names in the game and others not so great but Test cricketers all the same. None is more celebrated than Frank Worrell who was in Combermere's first team at 13 and Barbados' at 17. Along with Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott, he was one of the "Three Ws" triumvirate that accumulated 39 hundreds in 143 Tests between them as West Indies first established their status as a cricket power in the 1950s.

His two mates had both retired when, at the age of 36, Worrell was appointed the first black captain; another Combermerian, the allrounder Denis Atkinson, had been one of the last white captains. Worrell immediately inspired a new generation of stars on his first assignment, the unforgettable series, with its tied Test and entertaining play, in Australia in 1960-61. One was Wes Hall, another from Worrell's old school, the tearaway who spearheaded the attack for a decade.

Worrell, the other Ws and Hall, later selector, team manager, board president and a government cabinet minister, were all subsequently knighted, mainly, but not only, for their contributions to the game.

Two Combermerians from a much earlier era have long since been part of West Indies' cricket's folklore. Herman Griffith, a giant in local club cricket, was a clever fast-medium bowler who was in the West Indies team for 13 of their first 15 Tests between 1928 and 1933. The most indelible of his 44 wickets was at the SCG in February 1931, Don Bradman knocked over for a duck for the first time in Tests.

On England's first Test tour of the Caribbean, in 1930, Derek Sealy was a gifted all-round sportsman, still at Combermere. He had to seek the headmaster's permission to turn out for Barbados in the two island matches preceding the first Test; a hundred in the second gained him selection for the Test. He began with 58 in his first innings against an attack included Bill Voce and Wilfred Rhodes.

He was 17 years, 122 days old, still the West Indies youngest Test player. His 11 Tests as a stylish right-hand batsman, medium-pace bowler and occasional wicketkeeper came to an end when the Second World War intervened.

The basis for such productivity in an island of 166 square miles and a population of 270,000 can be traced to the placement of the three leading boys' grammar schools - Harrison College and the Lodge were the others - in the top division of the club tournament from the early decades of the 20th century. Combermere was the last to be promoted, in 1929.

The aim was to expose the best boys to the cut and thrust of competition against opponents invariably with Test and first-class players in their ranks, to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Combermere prevailed over the established clubs to win the first division championship in 1941, a unique record. In addition to their 17, another 13 Test cricketers have come through Harrison College - Clyde Walcott (who started out at Combermere) being the most outstanding - and six through The Lodge, among them the captain of the early 1950s, John Goddard.

A key to such development was the input of teachers with Test or first-class backgrounds, such as Sealy during Combermere's heyday in the 1940s, who doubled up as coaches.

The preference for the three separate schools at the top couldn't last. It was finally transformed in 1970 into the more democratic all-schools combination. As schools became co-educational and the choice of sports multiplied, putting pressure on cricket, most clubs largely took over the grounding, previously the preserve of the schools, through their youth programmes.

Two of the youngest members in the present West Indies' squad came through schools that had been all-girls. Jason Holder, 23, graduated from St Michael, where former Barbados, West Indies and Glamorgan fast bowler Ezra Moseley was coach, and Shai Hope, 21, from Queen's College.

Combermere has employed as professional coach for the past ten years, Roddy Estwick, the former Barbados and Transvaal fast bowler whose half-brother, the late Sylvester Clarke, drove fear through a generation of county batsmen in the 1980s.

It is a system that nurtured Griffith, Sealy, Worrell, Walcott, Hall and a host of other West Indies and Barbados players. Kraigg Brathwaite and Jordan are among the contemporary set, old school friends but rivals once more at Kensington Oval over the next five days.