Next in our series on the origin stories of elite cricketers, Jo Harman tells the story of a father and son who followed in the footsteps of genius

RON & DEAN HEADLEY 

Ron pictured with Dean ahead of his son’sTest debut at OldTrafford in 1997

PHOTO BY CHRIS TURVEY

Dean Headley only met his grandfather George once. He recalls a “very humble, quiet man” visiting the family home in Stourbridge when Dean was around 11 and inviting a couple of his mates around to catch a glimpse of the great George Alphonso Headley, who by then was in his early 80s. When George died a couple of year later, he remembers the news being broken to him at school.

“I was at boarding school at the time and I remember coming into a Maths lesson in the morning and my teacher just said, ‘I’m sorry to hear about your granddad’, and that was the first I’d heard about it. My dad had been waiting to tell me when he saw me at the weekend. It was a bit weird being told like that. I remember crying because I wanted to go to the funeral in Jamaica. I think probably in hindsight my dad would have taken more of the family out there.”

George’s send-off was a grand affair. Granted an ‘official funeral’ by the Jamaican government, hundreds of mourners paid their respects in Kingston Parish Church ahead of a service attended by the island’s leading politicians. The coffin was transported across the city in a motorcade as people lined the streets to say farewell to one of their own.

George Headley in full flow at Old Trafford in 1939

“Headley was far more than simply the greatest batsman on all wickets against all attacks and in all circumstances that the West Indies has produced,” reflected Michael Manley, the former Jamaican prime minister and author of A History of West Indies Cricket. “His was a status given to few men to occupy. He became a symbol of excellence and accomplishment; he was a symbol of how men can arise from the awful constraints of poverty and, by force of character, harness God-given skills to worthwhile purposes.”