… still discussed with fervency and unbridled glee
HE brought wondrous delight to thousands across the globe with his uninhibited, aggressive and fluent style of batting ever since he made his Test debut against Australia at Melbourne in 1968-69.
Now 33 years since he played his final Test and ten years to the day since he went to the Great Beyond, Roy Clifton Fredericks’ exploits are still discussed with fervency and unbridled glee whenever and wherever cricketing fans converge.
To truly appreciate his exploits on the cricket field and his general contribution to West Indies cricket one must take into consideration several pertinent factors.
Fredericks entered the Test team at a time when the high performing opener Conrad Hunte had moved off the scene and West Indies were struggling to find a worthy pair to start the innings.
He got his chance in the second Test of the five-match series when he partnered his fellow countryman Stephen Camacho at the top of the order and duly top-scored with 76 in his first knock and accomplished 47 in his second.
In this particular Test Freddo’s senior partner took the first ball on both occasions but it is interesting to note that in all but one of his other 58 Tests he faced the first ball of every West Indies Test innings.
The lone exception was in the second Test of West Indies tour to India in 1974-75 when at Delhi he batted at number seven in the lone West Indies innings because he was carrying an injury and was off the field for a lengthy time when India batted first.
During his distinguished career of 59 Tests and 4 334 runs Fredericks had as many as 15 different opening partners, including starting the innings with two different partners in the same Test on four separate occasions.
He opened the batting with Stephen Camacho, Joey Carew, Rohan Kanhai, Deryck Murray, Mike Findlay, Desmond Lewis, Maurice Foster, Geoffrey Greenidge, Ron Headley, Lawrence Rowe, Gordon Greenidge, Leonard Baichan, Bernard Julien, Alvin Kallicharran and Vivian Richards.
Another important factor to consider is that Fredericks played his cricket at a time when batsmen wore very little protective gear.
For the head, sometimes it was bare. At other times it was covered with the maroon West Indies cap or a ‘floppy hat’. There were no chest and arm guards and the pads and gloves used then may be considered primitive now.
Add to this that the pitches around the world played a lot faster and bowlers could bowl as many short-pitched deliveries and bouncers as they please and you begin to imagine Freddo’s calibre as an opener who feared no foe.  
His plundering of the Australian four-pronged pace attack of Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thompson, Max Walker and Gary Gilmour on a Perth flier in the second Test of the 1975-76 series when he reeled off  numerous classical and astonishing strokes on his way to a match-winning 169 is still discussed in revered circles today.
He got to his century in only 71 balls and struck 27 sensational fours and a solitary six all told.
Lest we forget, the regional bowlers all got a good pasting from the blades of Fredericks.
The Jamaican pacer Uton Dowe paid the ultimate price for trying to bounce him out and he was purposefully dispatched for 22 in an over at Sabina Park in 1972. He came out on top during his duels with the Barbadian speedsters as he did in 1975 when he set Kensington Oval alight with a truly stroke-filled 250. 
One must take into the reckoning also that as he neared the end of his distinguished Test career, One Day Internationals were now slowly beginning to make a headway in the scheme of cricketing schedules. They were still being fitted in between Test matches as just an addition and there were no separate squads and Limited Overs specialists as we have today.
Nevertheless, Fredericks scored his Test runs at a quick clip and in the 12 ODIs he played between 1973-1977 his strike rate was 70.68. He scored one century (105 against England at The Oval in 1973) but it was the first hundred recorded by a West Indian in One Day Internationals and it stood for sometime as the highest individual score by anyone in that form of the game.
There were some who, in the early part of his career, doubted whether Fredericks could have made it at the top level because of his inability to play high class spin and the defensive innings. But he proved them wrong.
He did take some time to score his first Test ton but it was a big one. He compiled a typically forthright 163 in the first innings of the Jamaica Test against New Zealand in 1972 but of course this was overshadowed by Lawrence Rowe’s epic double and single hundreds on debut.
However, four of his eight Test centuries were scored either against a crop of cunning spinners or in back-to-the-wall knocks.
After West Indies comfortably won the First Test at The Oval against England in 1973, the second Test at Birmingham ended in a draw. It was here that Fredericks batted smartly to achieve the draw as West Indies went into the final Test at Lord’s. He made 150 out of a total of 327 all out in the first innings. His knock spanned eight and one half hours. He took his stance over 443 deliveries.
Against the great Indian spinners – Bedi, Chandrasekhar and Prasanna in 1974-75 he scored an even hundred at Eden Gardens, Calcutta. He followed that up with a series-winning 104 at Bombay.
In 1977 against Pakistan at the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad he again carried West Indies to victory with his steady and level-headed batting. In the first innings he carefully crafted a serene 120 out of 316 all out, an innings that stretched over six and a half hours. The next best score was Irving Shillingford’s 39.
West Indies won 15 of the 59 Tests he played and he averaged a whopping 57.09 and registered four centuries when they did so. He averaged 30.31 in the 19 Tests West Indies lost during his career.
Another important statistic to consider in Fredericks’ career is the fact that he was as good abroad as he was at home.
In the Caribbean be played 28 Test matches and scored 2 166 runs at 46.08 with a top score of 163 and on the way he compiled two centuries. Away from the comfort of home he was engaged in 31 matches and his aggregate was 2 168. He averaged 39.41 and touched the century mark six times.
His international career aside, he also played with gusto, dynamism and pride for Berbice, Demerara Cricket Club and Glamorgan. In fact he averaged 63.83 when playing for his homeland.
Fredericks was a special breed and brand of player that caused you to want to follow West Indies cricket wherever and whenever it was played – even when the commentaries were broadcast via radio from Australia and India in the wee, weird hours of the morning.