HARPER, Roger Andrew
D.O.B: March 17, 1963 (Georgetown, Guyana)
Teams: Guyana, Northamptonshire, West Indies
Roger Harper was a tall, sturdy off-spinning all-rounder who played 25 Test matches and 105 One- Day Internationals for the West Indies between 1983 and 1996 at a time when the emphasis on pure pace was paying rich dividends.
He played competitively as a student at the Queen’s College and was given special permission to play for his local club-Demerara Cricket Club-alongside seasoned Test players Lance Gibbs, Clive Lloyd and Roy Fredericks while he was yet at school.
The evidence of his rich talent won him a place in the national youth team at age 16 and he subsequently became a member of the young regional side rising to the honourable position of captain to England in 1982.
In 1980, at 17, Harper made his first-class debut in the Regional Shell Shield Tournament against Barbados at the Kensington Oval but ended wicketless in the only innings he bowled.
However, he bounced back in his second game against Jamaica in Montego Bay where he finished with match figures of nine for 165 including the technical correct Lawerence Rowe whom he clean bowled in the first innings for six.
Early in his career, he was a big spinner of the ball and was extremely deceptive with his flight and variations. This was evident not only with his dismissal of Rowe but of another text-book player-Geoff Boycott-whom he bowled twice in the same match while playing for Young West Indies against England at Guaracara Park, Trinidad in 1981.
Harper’s consistent bowling, steady batting and athletic fielding at the regional level catapulted him into the West Indies touring squad to India in 1983.
He made his debut in the fifth Test of the series in Calcutta but sent down only eight overs in the entire match as speedsters Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Winston Davis shared the spoils in a massive West Indies triumph.
When the Australians visited the Caribbean early in 1984, he played in four of the five Tests and his performances secured for him a place to England later in the year. As the West Indies dished out a ‘blackwash’ on the English, Harper played his part with 13 wickets 21.23 runs apiece including his best figures of six for 57 in the Old Trafford game.
His exploits prompted Northamptonshire to employ him as their overseas player and in 1986 he had a vintage year copping 62 victims at 26.93 runs each and struck his highest first-class score of 234 against Gloucestershire. His spectacular fielding also lifted the entire team.
In the same year he became captain of the Guyana team and led from the front taking 23 wickets and aggregating 270 runs.
He also contested two of the five Tests against England in the Caribbean, and in the Antigua Test he made 60 and captured four wickets as West Indies effected a second clean sweep.
At this point of his career, Harper was involved in numerous One-Day matches and sacrificed loop and enticement for containment. Coupled with injuries, he found it increasingly difficult to revert to his guile in Tests and the wickets became scarce.
As a consequence, he was omitted from the squad to New Zealand in 1986-87 but another excellent performance in the regional competition forced the selectors to recall him for the 1987 World Cup in Asia as vice-captain to Viv Richards.
Prior to the World Cup campaign, he turned out for a World XI against the MCC in the Bicentenary Test at Lord’s in mid 1987 and effected one of the most incredible run outs in the history of the game.
Bowling to Graham Gooch who had a century to his name, Harper intercepted a drilled smack on the onside of the pitch and in the same flowing movement he fired the return which uprooted Gooch’s middle stump, sending the batsman on all fours-and short of his ground.
So quick was the action, it prompted English writer Scyld Berry to pronounce that “Gooch should have been given out stumped and bowled Harper”.
He returned to the Test team to England in 1988 when he played in the last three games of the five match series. He compiled two half centuries in three opportunities at the crease including his highest Test score of 74 at Old Trafford, Manchester.
His bowling, though, was limited to just two overs over the first two matches he played (such was the pacemen’s dominance) but when given an extended bowl in the final Test he returned match figures of five for 59.
With newcomer Carl Hooper and old-stager Viv Richards bowling more overs, Harper found himself hardpressed to claim a regular place in the team.
He toured Australia in 1988-89 and was involved in a solitary Test in Sydney, then four years later he played his final game against Sri Lanka in Maratuwa.
However, he continued to be engaged in One Day Internationals until 1996 including campaigning in the 1992 and 1996 World Cups.
When his playing days were over, he coached the West Indies senior team between 2000 and 2003 and the Kenyan side until September 2007.
Harper is the current President of the Georgetown Cricket Association and is still involved with the Demerara Cricket Club.

RECORD
TESTS: 25                        RUNS: 535          AVG: 18.44
WKTS: 46                        AVG: 28.06          BB: 6/57 vs England, Old Trafford, 1984

ODI: 105                           RUNS: 855          AVG: 16.13
WKTS:100                       AVG: 34.31          BB: 4/40 vs England, Trinidad, 1994
(Digicel: Guyana’s Bigger, Better Network)