R.I.P. Allan Rae (1922-2005)

Allan Fitzroy Rae, the Jamaica and West Indies opening batsman, has passed away at the age of 82. The left-hander played all of 15 Tests for the Caribbean side, and later served on the Jamaican Cricket Association and the West Indies Cricket Board.

Rae debuted for the West Indies in the 1948/49 series against hosts India on the subcontinent. He was 26 at the time, and scored hundreds in the second and fourth Tests to establish himself as a genuine talent. On the subsequent tour of England in 1950, Rae registered scores of 97, 106 and 109.

Overall his Test record reads impressively at 1016 runs in 24 innings for an average of 46.18. Rae’s 4 Test hundreds match 4 Test fifties to represent an excellent conversion rate. Further leaving a mark on West Indian cricket, his average opening partnership 71.00 with Jeffrey Stollmeyer remains the record for the regional side.

Indeed, Allan Rae’s career was full of promise and perhaps was ended too soon, when he decided to leave cricket for a career in Law at the age of 30.

For more than a decade Rae stood as the president of the Jamaican Cricket Association. As a member of the WICB, he is noted as rallying for player rights in the midst of the infamous Kerry Packer situation of the late 1970s.

In 1981, when Allan Rae became became the president of the WICB, he took up a 7-year tenure marked most notably by his anti-apartheid policy, which saw all West Indies rebel players who toured South Africa receive life bans.

For as much as his on field achievements, Allan Rae stands to be remembered as a leading administrator withing the institution of West Indies cricket. Allan Fitzroy Rae : 1922-2005.