Bernard Julien obituary: ‘As good as Sobers’

JULIEN, BERNARD DENIS, who died on October 4, aged 75, reached the peak of his Test career on a sun-drenched Friday at Lord’s in August 1973. In a seventh-wicket partnership of 155 with Garry Sobers, Julien hammered a thrilling century. After hitting his first two balls for four, he was dropped on nine, but then produced a brutal display of orthodox strokeplay, finishing with 121 off 143 deliveries in only his third Test. “He played outrageously well for someone who had never previously made a first-class hundred,” wrote John Woodcock in The Times. “He has as great a gift of timing as anyone in the West Indies side.” When Sobers counselled him against the occasional wild slash, it seemed the old master was anointing his successor. Though Julien batted right-handed, he bowled destructive left-arm swing from an energetic run-up and, like Sobers, could switch between two modes of spin. And he was an electrifying fielder.

“He was as good as Sobers,” said his Kent team-mate Alan Ealham. “He had all the talent in the world.” But Julien did not achieve greatness. “He was not quite as disciplined – he enjoyed life,” said Ealham. “He was never pushed, and he did not push himself.” There were a sprinkling of eye-catching performances in a 24-Test career that brought 866 runs at 30, and 50 wickets at 37. But when, in 1976, captain Clive Lloyd settled on his policy of all-out pace, Julien could not keep up. And in the early 1980s, after joining rebel tours to South Africa, he was ostracised in his native Trinidad.

Julien’s potential was obvious from the moment he made his first-class debut, for North Trinidad, soon after his 18th birthday in April 1968. In only his third match, he took 7-63 and hit a fifty. In the spring of 1970, he played against a touring Duke of Norfolk’s XI including Mike Denness, Colin Cowdrey and Derek Underwood. An invitation for a trial season with Kent followed, though they hardly rolled out the red carpet: when he arrived, there was no one to meet him at the airport and, after taking a taxi to Canterbury, he was put up in an insalubrious city pub. He played one first-class match that summer, but his performances for the Second XI were sensational. By 1971, he was a first-team regular, and he played a key role in Kent’s progress to the Gillette Cup final, with 5-25 against Yorkshire in the second round.

Julien went on to become an invaluable member of a team that won five one-day trophies, and shared the Championship with Middlesex in 1977. His versatility was remarkable. In 1975, he took 5-55 against Somerset at Folkestone bowling left-arm spin; two weeks later, he deployed swing to pick up 7-66 against Sussex at Hove. “He swung the ball into the right-hander, and learned to bowl the one that was angled across,” said Ealham. “And his run-up was so rhythmical that he looked innocuous.” Julien was a complete athlete. In an impromptu contest at Canterbury, he hurled the ball over the Frank Woolley Stand from the far end of the square from a standing start. No other player came close.

Some felt he might have achieved more, but he was often too far down the order for his batting to have maximum impact. “He could easily have batted at three or four,” said Ealham. The statistician John Winnifrith calculated that two-thirds of his first-class wickets for Kent were top-five batsmen. With his good looks and easy grace, Julien cut a striking figure. West Indies’ wicketkeeper Deryck Murray told the writer Ashley Gray: “It’s putting it mildly to say that sometimes you wondered whether women weren’t his real priority.” After the outstanding start to his Test career, he played all five matches against England in the Caribbean in 1973/74. In West Indies’ victory in the first match, at Port-of-Spain, he hit an unbeaten 86 at No.8, earning praise from EW Swanton for his “great good sense and unusual restraint”. He made a more typical 66 in the second Test at Kingston, then took 5-57 in the third at Bridgetown. He ended up topping West Indies’ bowling averages, with 16 wickets at 23, and averaged 43 with the bat.

In his next 24 innings, including two as opener in Australia – where Jeff Thomson broke his thumb – his only score over 50 was a century against Pakistan at Karachi in 1974/75. And in six Tests in 1976 against India and England, he took only four wickets at 109. His decline became obvious to team-mates. “I noticed his inconsistency, not only from one day to the other, but from one spell to the next,” said Murray. “People with less natural talent did better than him, but it was not that they had improved – it was that Bernard was not performing to his maximum.” His charisma, though, was undiminished. When the team filmed a shampoo commercial, Julien relished taking the lead vocal.

His one-day prowess made him an automatic selection for the first men’s World Cup, in 1975. Taking the new ball with Roberts, he finished second in the tournament averages, with 10 wickets at 17, including 4-20 against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford, and 4-27 in the semi-final win over New Zealand. In the final against Australia at Lord’s, his unbeaten 26 was crucial in West Indies’ 17-run win. In 1977, he joined the exodus to Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. He did not play in the “Supertests”, but did pull off an astounding catch to dismiss Rob Langer at Football Park in Adelaide.

At the end of his Packer contract, and no longer playing county cricket, Julien was reduced to a handful of domestic games for Trinidad each season. Against Jamaica at Queens Park Oval in 1981/82, he took 9-97, then the second-best figures in the Caribbean’s first-class competition. It was a useful reminder of his talents to the South Africans covertly recruiting players from across the region for the first rebel tour in 1982/83. He played only one-day games on the first tour, but a year later appeared in one of the matches against a South Africa XI. It was his last first-class game.

Julien was banned from cricket at home, and his career was over before his 34th birthday. In Trinidad, his decision to sign up was widely condemned. “They are mercenaries fighting the cause of apartheid on the backs and blood of the black people of South Africa,” said foreign minister Basil Ince. He was stripped of the Chaconia medal, one of the country’s highest decorations. In his book about the rebel tours, The Unforgiven, Gray struggled to locate Julien, and managed only brief phone conversations. He told Gray he knew nothing about apartheid. “It was the only option I had,” he said. “I didn’t think there would be a life ban.”

Later, there was some rehabilitation when he served as a national selector and held coaching roles. But he suffered from throat cancer and depression, and often missed appointments. Yet the memory of his early swagger lived on. “He had that star quality,” said West Indies batsman and fellow Trinidadian Gus Logie. “The way he walked, the way he talked, the way he did things with grace and panache – you’d pay any amount of money to see him perform.”

Follow Wisden for all cricket updates, including live scores, match stats, quizzes and more. Stay up to date with the latest cricket news, player updates, team standings, match highlights, video analysis and live match odds.