Tony Becca

MANY JAMAICANS today would not believe it, but there was a time in this country when table tennis was considered a major sport - right behind cricket, football and athletics.

In those days, and especially so in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, young boys used to walk around with racquets in their back pockets looking for a table on which to parade their skill. The table tennis star was almost as well known as the cricket star who, in those days, was the star of stars, and Jamaica was the king of the region.

Outstanding scoring

In those days, 21 points constituted a set, the best-of-three sets was a game, three players made up a team, each player played the other, and during the regional tournament, when Jamaica played Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana in the men's team event, the score, nine times out of 10, was 9-0 in Jamaica's favour.

In those days, starting in 1958 with the first West Indies Table Tennis Championships, Fuarnado Roberts, Glen Mitchell and Leo Davis, plus others like Jeff Lewis, Jasper Adams and Ken McLachlan, Jamaica were almost unbeatable. In fact they were so strong that three Jamaicans, Roberts, Mitchell and Davis, were selected to represent the West Indies at the 1959 World Championships in Nagoya, Japan.

In those days also there was a family, the likes of which the game in Jamaica had never seen before and has not seen since.

There was father Gig - the coach, mother Olga - the motivator and cheerleader, and there were Maurice, Dave and Joy - the children, who played and left an indelible mark on the sport.

With Maurice, the Jamaica and West Indies cricketer, winning the all-Jamaica singles at the age of 16 and three Caribbean men's doubles, with Dave winning the Caribbean men's singles three times, winning the mixed doubles four times - three times with sister Joy, and the men's doubles once, and with Joy winning the Caribbean women's singles on two occasions, the mixed doubles three times and the women's doubles once before leaving the game at age 16, they were all brilliant - all three of them.

Who was the best of them?

To many fans, Maurice was the most talented - so talented, so natural, tha the fans of Roberts may not believe it, some believe that had it not been for his love for cricket, he would have become the best player this country ever produced.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that Joy, a national representative at the age of eight, the national singles champion at the age of eight, and a lovely attacking player with a deadly backhand flick who gave up the sport at an age when so many are just starting, was the best.

To me, however, the best of the Fosters, the third best player, behind Orville Haslam and Roberts, that this country has produced, was Dave.

He was a magnificent attacking player, vicious against another attacker, and he was deadly against defenders. He used to rip them apart with his savage two-winged attack.

I will never forget Dave as a 14-year-old playing his first match for Jamaica in 1959 at Ward Theatre against Winston 'Reds' Mulligan - a 14-year-old from Trinidad playing his first match for his country.

With older players like Roberts, Mitchell and Davis in the Jamaica team, with one like Taffy Crichlow in Trinidad's team, it was billed as the battle of the teenagers - a duel between an attacker and a chopper.

Dave destroyed 'Reds' to the extent, as the story went, that the youngvisitor ended up in tears.

I will never forget Dave in 1963 when, with Jamaica down 2-4 to Trinidad and Tobago, he started the recovery that led to victory. I will never forget him in that same tournament handing 'Reds' another lesson in the men's singles final, and I will never forget his brilliant comeback when, after losing the first two sets and trailing 2-11 in the third, he brushed aside Neville Phipps of Trinidad and Tobago in winning the 1965 men's singles title.

Dave Foster died in Florida last Wednesday, but the memory of his attacking play, of his greatness, of the quality, the skill which made him one of the country's top three table tennis players, will remain with me for a long, long time - and so too will the memory of his eyes, of his concentration during play, and of his smile when his last shot flashed past his opponent or when, in relaxation, he gave a joke or two.

Walk good, my friend.