As this thread is named after a West Indian cricket legend, I'll repeat this from the BBC text commentary.
The BBC, via Twitter wrote:To find your own personal West Indian cricketer's name, take the surname of the US President when you were born, and add to it the last British seaside town you visited.
This gives me something of a problem. The last place on the coast I've been to was Heysham, but that was only because the boat from the Isle of Man docked there. The last place I visited in the Isle of Man was Douglas, because I had to return there to get the boat - earlier on I'd been in Castletown, but did spend some time in Douglas on the last day. But does Manx count as "British", seeing as while I was there, Tynwald Day happened (I planned that) which reminded everyone, the Isle of Man is not part of the UK, but presumably counts under "British Isles". If it doesn't count, strictly, then the previous coastal settlement I visited was Aberdeen, but only then because I had to change planes there on the way back from the Shetlands - I never left the airport. I suppose Lerwick was the last
genuinely British coastal town that I
genuinely visited. Even so, I don't think Lerwick, Aberdeen, Heysham or Castletown make particularly good surnames.
The first name is very straightforward - I was born in 1979 when Jimmy Carter was US President.
I'm going to add something in there as well: the cricketer's middle name(s). I see several choices here:
(1) The defeated Presidential candidate for any election that the winner competed in, provided that that candidate wasn't the incumbent President or would be later.
(2) The Vice President for that term
(3) The President's running mate, if that's not the same as the Vice President
(4) The First Lady's maiden name
For the 1976 Presidential Election, Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford, the incumbent President (disqualified), his running mate was Walter Mondale, who became his Vice President, and Rosalynn Carter's maiden name was Smith (dull).
So I'd like to introduce you all to my Antiguan alter-ego, the rock-steady opening batsman, Carter Mondale Douglas. He might not be a swashbuckling six-spanker like Viv Richards or Chris Gayle, but you'll have to change the cricket ball for a grenade to get him out.
I'm sure that between the readers of this forum we can come up with an entire starting eleven, and their place in the order. For starters, on the text commentary there's already been an Eisenhower Porthcawl (probably a middle-order batsman) and Clinton Whitby. However, if he who went to Whitby had gone down the coast a bit, the name would have been Clinton Scarborough, and that sounds to me like the natural successor to Curtly Ambrose. Clinton Rodham Scarborough works very well, I'd say.
If I take the last places on the coast that I know I went to with my dad and grandad respectively - and as they're both long dead (1942-93 and 1915-95 respectively) I'm stretching the memory somewhat - we come up with two further players in Roosevelt Wallace Weston(-super-Mare...!) and Wilson Marshall Aldeburgh (possibly a backup bowler, doesn't open the bowling, bats at 11). Throw in my uncle as well (born 1945) and we have the superbly-named Truman Barkley Sheringham.
Go on, then, you lot - show me what you've got. I'm expecting a flurry of Clintons, obviously, but there's been quite a few Presidents with surnames that'd work very well here, even if none of them would occur amongst the F1 Rejects crowd. Reagan, obviously; Nixon as well, and there's really been Nixon McLean playing for the Windies a decade or so ago; see also Ford, Johnson, Kennedy, McKinley, Cleveland (did someone say Family Guy?), Arthur (must have been one already), Garfield (Sobers), Grant (though Ulysses is also an excellent first name), Lincoln... there are some clunkers, though - Bush, Obama and Taft don't make for good first names, and I'm not convinced about Coolidge either.
