Roy Fredericks

November 11 down the years: Birth of the hard-hitting Guyanese cricketer Roy Fredericks

Dashing openers are ten-a-penny in the modern age, but in the days when openers blocked and middle-order batters attacked, the West Indian left-hander Roy Fredericks, who was born on November 11, 1942, was a revelation.

His blistering 169 against Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson on a Perth flyer in 1975-76 was one of the most audacious innings ever played in a Test, and though Fredericks was only 5ft 6in tall, he gave the ball a fearful whack.

He followed up that Perth ton with a very good tour of England in 1976, when he made 517 runs in the five Tests.

Fredericks played 59 Tests in all, bowing out against Pakistan in Jamaica in 1976-77 with a typically flamboyant 83.

He later became sport minister of his native Guyana. Fredericks died of cancer in New York in September 2000.

Fredericks scored 4,334 runs in Test cricket with eight hundreds and 26 fifties, ending with an average of 42.49. In 12 ODIs, he managed 311 runs with a solitary hundred.