Leslie Hylton

Leslie George Hylton (29 March 1905 – 17 May 1955) was a Jamaican cricketer, a right-arm bowler and useful lower-order batsman who played in six Test matches for the West Indies between 1935 and 1939.

Hylton was born on 29 March 1905, in Kingston, Jamaica.

He was brought up in difficult family circumstances, in the lower strata of Jamaican society, not knowing who his father was.

His mother died when he was three years old, and he was raised by his sister, who died when he was barely a teenager.

His education was intermittent and incomplete; on the death of his aunt, he left school and became an apprentice in a tailor's shop.

He appears to have made little progress in this trade, and took up a variety of unskilled jobs before becoming a dock labourer.

Despite the handicap of his impoverished background, Hylton grew up to be strong and athletic, and acquired considerable skill and a local reputation as a cricketer.

When and how he began to play is not recorded; in his book A History of West Indies Cricket, Michael Manley surmises that most impoverished Kingston youngsters learned the game using a coconut branch and a tennis ball.

The cricket historian Mike Marqusee writes that, by the early 20th century, all social classes in the West Indies had taken up cricket, although clubs were typically stratified in a hierarchy of skin tones.

By the 1920s even the more exclusive cricket clubs of the colonies had begun to accept into their numbers talented cricketers such as Hylton, from the lower orders of society.

According to Manley, "it was becoming increasingly clear that the descendants of the former slaves showed remarkable aptitude for the game".

It was the normal course of events that black, uncoached players such as Hylton should emerge as bowlers rather than batsmen.

Hylton developed as an all-rounder, a bowler who could vary speed with spin and who could also perform usefully as a batsman.

In the 1920s, opportunities for first-class cricket in Jamaica were limited, since its distance from the other West Indies cricketing colonies prevented its participation in inter-colonial tournaments.

First-class opposition was provided from time to time by visiting teams from England.

Born into poverty, Hylton became a regular member of the Jamaican cricket side from 1927.

One such touring side arrived at the beginning of 1927, led by the former England Test captain Lionel Tennyson and containing several other English Test cricketers including Percy Fender and Ernest Tyldesley.

The party's fixtures included three representative first-class matches against the Jamaica XI; Hylton, aged 21, had been noticed in local cricket, and was given a place in the Jamaican side for the first match, which began at the Sabina Park ground in Kingston on 19 February 1927.

In the match, Hylton scored 32 and 7 in his two innings, being not out in each case.

He failed to take a wicket as a bowler, but held two catches in the field.

He kept his place for the second representative game, played at Melbourne Park, and made his mark as a bowler by taking 5 Tennyson XI wickets for 34 runs in the tourists' first innings, and 3 for 53 in their second.

These performances were enough to establish a regular place in the Jamaican side.

In December 1927 he travelled to Bridgetown, Barbados, to take part in a trial match which would help select the touring party for the West Indies' debut Test series, to be played against England in 1928.

Although overlooked on several occasions for the full West Indies team, he was finally selected in 1935, to face the visiting English touring team.

He performed well, as part of a trio of fast bowlers that also included Learie Constantine and Manny Martindale, and helped to secure a West Indies victory in the four-match Test series.

He was chosen again in 1939, for a three-Test tour of England, but was out of form and lost his place in the Test side.

On his return home he retired from first-class cricket.

In 1942 Hylton married Lurline Rose, the daughter of a police inspector.

A son was born in 1947.

In the early 1950s, Lurline Hylton's ambitions to be a dress designer led to long absences at fashion schools in New York.

There, she met up with Roy Francis, a reputed philanderer, and the two began an affair.

When Hylton learned of this he confronted his wife, and after initial denials she confessed.

Hylton then shot her seven times.

His defence of provocation was rejected by the court, which found him guilty and sentenced him to death.

Legal appeals, and a petition for clemency, proved to be of no avail as the law took its course.

Hylton has been generally overlooked in cricket histories.

In May 1955 he was hanged for the murder of his wife, whom he had shot in a jealous rage a year earlier.

The 1956 Wisden included an obituary that contained the date but not the manner or circumstances of his death.

Many years later an addendum briefly gave the details.

Later writers have considered the case more sympathetically, and have linked Hylton's treatment to his background of deprivation and to judicial intransigence.