West Indies' First Test — Lord's, June 1928

West Indian cricket had been organised through the inter-island competitions for decades, and English tours had visited the Caribbean since 1894-95. The 1923 tour to England had impressed observers (Challenor making 1,556 runs at 51.86), and the granting of Test status in 1928 was the formal recognition of a generation of Caribbean talent.

The West Indies had been admitted to Test status in May 1928, joining Australia, England and South Africa as a full member of the Imperial Cricket Conference. Their first Test took place at Lord's three weeks later. The team, captained by Jamaican Karl Nunes, included the great Learie Constantine, the gifted batsman George Challenor, and the wicketkeeper Tommy Scott.

England, captained by Percy Chapman with Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hammond, Hendren and Tate in the side, won the toss and made 401 — Hammond 45, Tate 50, Chapman 50. The West Indies, batting in their first Test innings, were dismissed for 177 (Constantine 13, Challenor 29; Tate 4 for 28). Following on, they were bowled out for 166 (Constantine 0, Challenor 46; Maurice Tate again the destroyer with 4 for 47). England won by an innings and 58 inside three days.

The series, played as three Tests, was lost 0-3 by the West Indies. But the symbolic act — a West Indian XI walking out at Lord's in white flannels in a Test match — was the foundation of what would become, by the 1980s, the dominant force in world cricket. Constantine, who scored only 89 runs in the series at 14.83, would in 1928 also accept his first Lancashire League contract with Nelson, beginning the migration of Caribbean professionals to the English leagues that would shape West Indian cricket for the next half-century.

“We had not played in conditions like Lord's before. The crowd was kind to us; the bowlers were not.”

The series was lost 0-3 (Old Trafford and the Oval also went England's way by an innings). But the experience produced the next generation: George Headley made his Test debut in early 1930, and by the mid-1930s the West Indies had become a genuinely competitive Test side. They won their first Test in 1930 in Georgetown.