By Neto Baptiste
Former national and Leeward Islands batsman, Enoch Lewis, said he was virtually forced out of the game at a young age after waking up one day and realising he had become the sole breadwinner in a family of 13.
Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show, Lewis, who scored 2,237 runs in 42 First Class matches with a highest of 158, revealed that in the early to mid-70s, circumstances left him with no other choice but to seek employment, which limited his ability to train and even play in the domestic leagues.
“I started working and there was a point in time shortly thereafter that the politics took toll where there was a change of government and everybody in my household lost their jobs. My father lost his job, my sister lost her job, my brother and all of them were working for government and they got fired so I was the sole breadwinner for the house and so I don’t think it was a choice. It was forced on me because if we were going to eat and I don’t know if you knew we were a family of 13 and so if we were going to eat then somebody had to provide the means for us to do so,” he said.
The right-arm batsman who represented Swetes in domestic cricket, said he never regretted his decision.
“I know people said that Enoch doesn’t have any interest in cricket and all of that, but it was circumstances driven in a lot of sense and I can tell you just as it has unfolded, I have no regrets really. If I came at a time when you had contracts where you could play cricket [as a professional] then I would have gone for cricket but it is just that I had to survive and my family had to survive,” he said.
Lewis is the current president of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board. He scored 554 runs from 18 List A matches with a highest of 94.