David Murray: A sordid saga of a magnificent cricketer

Wicket-keeper David Murray attempts to run out Peter Willey in the 4th Test between the West Indies and England in April 1981 at Antigua.

Then came the ill-fated tour to Australia in 1975-76, where the visitors were trounced by a heavy 5-1 margin. David’s marijuana use – he would smoke before and after the day’s play, but never during the breaks – became known. An intervention from senior player Lance Gibbs saved the 25-year-old from being sent back home.

Kerry Packer’s arrival on the scene during Australia’s return visit of the Caribbean proved to be a god-send for the young keeper. After Clive Lloyd resigned in protest along with many of the players who had signed up for World Series Cricket, David took over from Deryck, and contributed decently with both bat and gloves as his side won the five-match series.

Next, on his first tour of India as a member of the national squad, David blossomed as both batsman and wicket-keeper. But at Bombay, his stint with drugs re-started. Around the same time, he started doing cocaine in addition to marijuana, but his abilities were not hampered.

When his namesake retired, Murray became the first-choice keeper for the national team, but his place was under threat from a young player in the same mould – Jeff Dujon. Soldiering on despite a broken finger, he did well enough in the Test matches against Australia. However, Dujon’s superior batting abilities, translated into fine knocks, saw the incumbent 30-year-old dropped from the side for the ODI leg of the tour.

Murray was disgusted, and refused to serve as the drinks trolley-pushing 12th man. He says that he was fitter than before, yet the selectors did not pick him, and he was fined $1,000 for his outburst. He never played an international game for West Indies again.

Frustration seeped in when he was persistently ignored by the selectors despite decent performances back home. Dujon’s stocks were rising by this point, and it was evident that Murray wasn’t going to be considered for another shot at international glory. He threw in his lot with the 18-member squad that toured South Africa in 1982 and 1983, thus hammering the final nail in his coffin as far as international cricket was concerned.

$120,000 was the amount he received for his participation in the twin tours, but relentless barbs, jibes and furious voices of dissent forced him to live in Australia for about eight years after the second trip to the Rainbow Nation. The brickbats notwithstanding, Murray recollected that the children in South Africa, who had never imagined they would meet any cricketers, were ecstatic on meeting the rebels and even being coached by some of them.

Economic considerations were the chief reason for the life-changing decision that David and the others made, but the repercussions kept coming even after their return to their homeland.

The wicket-keeper could not find a steady job anywhere, and strangers on the street would constantly berate him for betraying his ilk for money. His drug habit was re-ignited, and the once-athletic sportsman was reduced to mere skin and bones, peddling the same set of substances he had become dependent on.

If Everton Weekes, at 88, could see his son in his lowest moments today, he would be too dazed for words. At 63, David looks like an octogenarian on his last legs.

He resides in his childhood locality of Station Hill in Barbados, and ekes out a meagre living by providing tourists with stuff. Along with Richard Austin and Herbert Chang, David Anthony Murray seems doomed to just fade away, with nothing left but wisps of memory of one of the greatest wicket-keepers in the world.

Discipline could have saved him. Now, it is a bit too late.