PLAYER, coach, captain, selector, manager, administrator and unwavering defender of the game's great values, Sir Clyde Walcott was a cricketing giant in every way.

He was an imposing figure of a man, six feet, two inches tall, and in his pomp, with the physique of a champion boxer.

His active participation in the sport in which he excelled lasted for more than half-a-century, from 1942 when he first represented Barbados, aged 16, while still at Harrison College, to 1999 when he relinquished his post as head of the cricket committee of the International Cricket Council (ICC), of which he had been the first non-English chairman.

In that time, in 44 Tests for the West Indies, he became one of the finest batsmen the game has known, forever linked with a triumvirate of Barbadian batsmen, born within a year and a mile of each other and everlastingly known as the 3Ws through the coincidence of the first letter of their surnames.

Walcott, the youngest of the three, and his mates, Frank Worrell and Everton Weekes, were to the forefront of the West Indies' emergence as a genuine force when Test cricket resumed in 1948 after the hiatus of the Second World War.

His roles off the field in maintaining its strength and eminence were as significant as his performances on it.

He spent 16 years in Guyana, from 1954 to 1970, employed by the giant Bookers company with the specific remit of improving the organisation and facilities in the rural areas. He described the time as "one of the most satisfying periods of my life" and he was deservedly credited with discovering a new pool of talent that has since enriched the game.

He became the first, and still only, non-Guyanese president of the Guyana Cricket Board. He captained the team, the highlight of which was victory over his native Barbados, at Kensington Oval, in 1963.

By now recognised for his administrative abilities, he returned to the business world in Barbados in 1970, rising to the directorship of Barbados Shipping and Trading, the island's largest company, and continuing his work for cricket.

He became vice-president of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA), and was selector and manager several times over of the West Indies team in the decade of virtual invincibility in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

With such a background, his rise to the presidency of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) was virtually inevitable. In 1993 came the crowning glory of his career when he was elected to succeed Sir Colin Cowdrey as chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), the game's most exalted position.

Even after handing over to Malcolm Gray of Australia after two terms, Sir Clyde was retained as head of the body's cricket committee, a group – mainly of former players – he had made one of his priorities as chairman.

In 1993, he received the ultimate accolade of the knighthood for his "contribution to cricket and cricket administration in the West Indies and internationally".

Before his untimely death in 1967, aged 42, Worrell had also been so acclaimed. Weekes' honour completed the set within a few years.

Of late, age had begun to take its toll on Sir Clyde's once robust body. There was also much unreasonable sadness – the deaths before their time of Lana, Worrell's daughter and wife of his eldest son, Michael, and of Ian, his youngest son, and, only three weeks before his own passing, that of his elder brother, Keith, also a Barbados cricketer and tireless administrator.

Through it all, his beloved wife, Muriel, was by his side, a tower of strength as she had been through their long life together.

Though he became frail, Sir Clyde rarely missed a major match at Kensington or a significant cricket event, the most recent the BCA's annual general meeting last month.

Clyde Walcott was born on January 17, 1926, into a family with a strong feeling for sport and its benefits, especially cricket.

His talent was immediately evident at his first secondary school, Combermere, where he met and played with Frank Worrell and where, aged 12, he became the youngest known player in the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) Division 1 competition that then included the three major schools (Harrison College and Lodge were the others).

He moved over to Harrison College where, in addition to his cricket exploits, he was also a forward in the football team and victor ludorum in the annual athletics championships, securing points with a record cricket ball throw of 121 yards, two feet, six inches.

But it was his cricket that attracted most attention and his heavy-scoring in Division 1 earned him his first selection for Barbados in the same team as Worrell and brother Keith, against Trinidad at the Queen's Park Oval.

It was on his 16th birthday, but put to open the batting on the matting pitch against the formidable new ball pair, Lance Pierre and Prior Jones, both future Test fast bowlers, he was out for eight and nought. In the return matches at Kensington five months later, batting at No.7 and then No.3, he scored 70, 67 and 50 and was a settled member of the team from then on.

He scored the first of his 40 first-class hundreds, 125 against British Guiana at Bourda, in 1944, and stunned the world two years later with an undefeated 314 against Trinidad at the Queen's Park Oval in a world record partnership of 574 with Worrell who was unbeaten 255.

It was surpassed by three runs by the Indian pair, Vijaz Hazare and Gul Mohammed, a year later but it still stands as the West Indies record for the wicket.

Such prolific scoring confirmed Walcott as a certainty for the West Indies in the first Test series in nine years, at home against England in 1948.

His proficiency as a wicket-keeper enhanced his value and, even though back problems limited him to 15 Tests, he turned himself into a useful, if occasional, medium-pacer.

With the exception of injuries that kept him out of two Tests on the difficult tour of Australia in 1951-52 and one against Pakistan at home in 1958, Walcott was an automatic choice thereafter.

His Test career ended in the Caribbean in 1960 when he was recalled for two Tests against England. Only George Headley, Everton Weekes and Garry Sobers among West Indians of similar longevity have averages better than his 56.71.

None of his 15 hundreds was more satisfying than his unbeaten 168 in the first West Indies victory over England, in England, at Lord's in 1950. It was a famous match, immortalised in calypso, that firmly established the West Indies.

But his apogee came when he compiled ten centuries (and a 98) in 15 Tests in successive home series: in 1953 against India, 1954 against England, and 1955 against Australia. In the last, he compiled a century in each innings in two Tests, an unprecedented feat.

Among the opposing bowlers were legends of the game – Subhash Gupte of India, Fred Trueman, Brian Statham, Jim Laker and Tony Lock of England, Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller and Richie Benaud of Australia. It was a remarkable record.

Sir Everton Weekes recalls that his friend and teammate's batting "was based on power and strength".

"He hit the ball harder than any of us," he wrote in the foreword to Walcott's autobiography.

"He had a unique style, a double backlift that encouraged some bowlers early in his career to believe that they had a chance of bowling him before his bat came down. They were to be disappointed".

Jeffrey Stollmeyer, the West Indies opener and captain during Walcott's Test career, painted a similar picture.

"He was one of the very few who could take fast bowling by the scruff of its neck and literally take it to pieces," he wrote in his autobiography.

"Several times I have seen Walcott throw his weight on to the right foot and crash some unsuspecting fast bowler straight overhead for six".

Yet, for all his aggression on the field, Walcott was quiet-spoken and thoughtful.

He was raised in a middle-class family in the conservatism of Barbados at the time.

His appreciation of accepted values would have been further nurtured under the tutelage of famous teachers at Combermere and Harrison College. Cricket, with its sense of fair play, was an integral part of his education.

He and his brother joined Spartan on leaving school and their names now grace the club's pavilion in Queen's Park.

Their eventual entry into unpaid and selfless administration was a matter of course. As with so many others of their era, they saw it as their duty.

An uncle, Harold, was an eminent umpire who gave Clyde out lbw for 98 in a Test against India at Kensington. It was a decision that would have surprised no one, not least the batsman himself. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised.

It was only natural that, as an administrator, Clyde should reveal himself as a stickler for principle. He never sought the soft options in making decisions, as selector, team manager, or board president.

As a West Indies selector, often as chairman, he was criticised, even vilified, by public, Press, and politicians many times over but he and his panels always stuck by their guns. This was especially true over the omission of Sobers from the 1973 home series against Australia on grounds of fitness.

As WICB president and representative on the ICC, Walcott opposed South Africa's readmission to world cricket in 1990, not on political grounds but because he was adamant their application did not follow proper procedure.

According to Ali Bacher, the head of South African cricket at the time, he was the central character in settling the row within the ICC over the preference for India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka rather than England in staging the 1996 World Cup.

Nothing upset or embarrassed him more during his WICB presidency than the boycott of South Africa's inaugural Test against the West Indies in his native Barbados in 1992.

There were wider issues that led to it but his stance was based on his strong sense of the accepted principle that the selectors' decision, like the umpires', is final.

Not that he was in any way an anachronism.

He embraced one-day cricket when others of his vintage tut-tutted. Even before they were introduced, he recognised the need for independent umpires and, as WICB president, stressed that television and sponsors were necessary to help finance the game.

He was, as all West Indians are, hurt by the prolonged West Indies decline and, although he never spoke of it publicly, and by the controversies that continue to plaque all aspects of the game in these parts.

His legacy deserved better.