Researching Maurice Foster

Born in Bloomfield, Ontario, Foster attended the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph and received a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in 1957. He then moved to Carnduff, Saskatchewan where he practiced as a veterinarian. In 1959, he moved to Desbarats near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

In 1968, he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada for the riding of Algoma. After retiring in 1993, he served as an adviser to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. He retired in 2001.

He died in 2010 after a three-year battle with pulmonary fibrosis.

A middle-order batsman and off-spinner, Foster played for Jamaica from 1963-64 to 1977-78, captaining the team from 1972-73 to 1977-78. After scoring centuries in the last two matches of the 1968-69 season as an opening batsman, he was selected to tour England in 1969. He scored 51 not out and 87 not out in the match against Somerset, and made his Test debut in the First Test, but scored only 4 and 3.

His next Tests were the Fourth and Fifth against India in 1970-71, when he made 36 not out, 24 not out, 99 and 18. Against New Zealand in 1971-72 he made only 93 runs at 23.25 in the first three Tests. He made his only Test hundred, 125, in the First Test against Australia in 1972-73 in front of his home crowd at Kingston, putting on 210 for the fifth wicket with Rohan Kanhai, but still played only four of the five Tests in that series.

He toured England for a second time in 1973. Although he scored 828 runs at 63.69 in the first-class matches, his only Test was in the innings victory at Lord's (the only time he was on the winning side in 14 Tests; he made 9 runs). On the tour he was offered a contract to play county cricket for Kent by Colin Cowdrey. He declined because he had a good job in Jamaica and was reluctant to uproot his family.

Thereafter his appearances were spasmodic as a new generation of batsmen emerged. His last Test, and his last first-class match, was in the Fifth Test against Australia in 1977-78 after the leading West Indies players had forfeited their Test places by signing with Kerry Packer. Years later, Cowdrey ran across Foster in Barbados and said, “You know Foster, you should have taken up that contract at Kent. Then you would have played a lot more for the West Indies.

His highest first-class score was 234 for Jamaica against Trinidad in 1976-77, and his best bowling figures were 5 for 65 against Guyana in 1971-72.

According to Michael Holding, Foster's career was affected when his wife asked him to choose between her and a tour of India. He chose her.

The genial Foster was also an excellent table tennis player, and at one time was West Indies champion. He is the brother of West Indian table tennis champions Joy Foster and the late Dave Foster.

Though not a specialist wicket-keeper, he acted as such for Worcestershire on a more than 20 occasions in the 1920s,while his strictly occasional bowling brought him three wickets, and for Worcestershire against Surrey in 1909 he dismissed Jack Hobbs for 1.

After a couple of games in Worcestershire's Second XI in 1907, Foster made his first-class debut for the county in August of the following year, against Lancashire at Worcester, and made 20 in his only innings. He played twice more that season, and ten times in 1909, but without great success. There then followed the first of several gaps in his cricketing career as a consequence of his business commitments.

Though he played occasional minor games in Malaya over the next few years,he did not return to first-class cricket until 1914, in which season he played 19 matches, all in the County Championship. In scoring 1,103 runs at 31.51, he passed a thousand runs for the first time; he also hit two hundreds: 118 against Leicestershire in May, and what was to remain a career-best 158 (in a losing cause) against Derbyshire in August.

The First World War then intervened, although Foster did play one first-class game during hostilities, in India in November 1917. This was a game staged at Calcutta between the Bengal Governor's XI (for whom Foster appeared, scoring 0 and 14) and the Maharaja of Cooch-Behar's XI. The match was staged in aid of the "Our Day" Fund.The Governor's side were bowled out for 33 and 59, losing by an innings to the Maharaja's team, who made 138. Unusually, only two bowlers were used in each of the three innings in the match.

Foster returned to Worcestershire action in 1920, although for three seasons his continuing overseas business meant that his appearances remained limited.However, in 1923 he was able to play a full season, and for four years he was highly successful, scoring over 1,300 runs in each summer, making a total of ten hundreds. In the weak Worcestershire team of that era, Roy Genders considered that he "carr[ied] the side on his shoulders".Foster was especially productive in June 1924, when he hit three centuries, and shortly afterwards was chosen for the Gentlemen against the Players at both The Oval and Lord's, albeit with very little personal success.

He captained the side between 1923 and 1925, although it was the following year, after he had relinquished the role to previous incumbent Maurice Jewell, that saw his heaviest run-scoring: 1,615 first-class runs at 32.95, with three hundreds and 12 fifties, including a hundred in each innings (141 and 106) against Hampshire. However, this was to be his last full season of first-class cricket, and he never again made a first-class fifty. He played three games in 1927, then nothing until his final four matches for the county seven years later, although he had turned out in the 1933 Minor Counties Championship for Staffordshire.

In 1935, Foster played for MCC against Ireland at Lord's in a minor match, then in early August 1936 played in an equivalent match, but one which did qualify as first-class, at Dublin. In this, his final first-class game, Foster both captained and kept wicket, and brought off the stumping of Ireland opener Francis Connell. He made no other dismissals, and his 18 and 47 could not prevent a heavy defeat.He then played club cricket for Walsall Cricket Club until shortly before his death; the club won the Birmingham League three times while he was there.

As mentioned above, six of his brothers played first-class cricket, as did three nephews (Christopher Foster, Peter Foster and John Greenstock) and his brother-in-law William Greenstock.