Franklyn Stephenson

Franklyn DaCosta Stephenson, born at Saint James, Barbados on 8 April 1959, is a former cricketer who had a first-class career for teams in four continents. He was a hard-hitting middle-order batsman and a right-arm bowler who, at his peak, was genuinely fast; in addition, he developed a pioneering slower ball and was the first bowler to use it regularly in one-day cricket.

A true all-rounder, Stephenson came to prominence first playing for the West Indies Young Cricketers team that toured England in 1978. Then, in less than eight months from the end of October 1981, he made his first-class debut, first in Australia, playing for Tasmania, then for his native Barbados, and finally for Gloucestershire in England.

But the debut that was to a large extent to define Stephenson's career was his one the following winter, 1982–83, on a fourth continent. He joined the rebel West Indies XI, led by Lawrence Rowe and Alvin Kallicharran, that toured South Africa, and played in so-called "Test" matches and "One Day Internationals" against the South African national cricket team that had been barred from world cricket because of apartheid. The rebel West Indian cricketers were themselves then barred from all levels of West Indies cricket for life, until the ban was lifted in 1989, and Stephenson never played true Test cricket. He is widely regarded as the greatest cricketer never to have played for the West Indies.

In fact, unlike most of the West Indian rebels, Stephenson did return to cricket in the West Indies, playing for Barbados in the 1989-90 Red Stripe Cup series. But most of his career was spent playing for English county teams and for Free State in South Africa.