Oscar Constantine Da Costa (11 September 1911 – 1 October 1936) was a West Indian

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

er who played in five Test matches for the

West Indies cricket team The West Indies cricket team, nicknamed the Windies, is a multi-national men's cricket team representing the mainly English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean region and administered by Cricket West Indies. The players on ...

during the 1930s. He was born at Kingston, Jamaica in September 1907 and died there prematurely in October 1936, aged just 29. A reliable

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, a useful medium-pace bowler and an agile, versatile fielder, he made his first-class career for Jamaica in February 1929 against a touring England XI put together and led by Sir

Julien Cahn Sir Julien Cahn, 1st Baronet (21 October 1882 – 26 September 1944) was a British businessman, philanthropist and cricket enthusiast. Early life and family Cahn was born in Cardiff in 1882 to parents of German Jewish descent. His father, Alber ...

; Da Costa himself bowled the opposing captain for 0 in the visitor's first innings. In 1930, in only his fifth

first-class match First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

, he was selected to play in the fourth

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match against England and performed adequately, scoring 39 in his only visit to the crease, taking a wicket in each of the English innings and holding three catches in the match. In 1933, he was selected to tour England with

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

. He scored over 1,000 runs on the tour at an average of 26.82, including his maiden century, 105 against

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. However, he was less successful in the three Test matches, scoring just 70 runs from six innings and taking one wicket. After this, Da Costa appeared just once more for the West Indies, this being the second Test of England's visit to the Caribbean at Port of Spain in 1934/35 where he helped the home team to a convincing victory. Oscar da Costa never played a first-class match against any of the other colonial islands and only nine of his 39 matches were for Jamaica. All his matches were played against Select XIs, against counties and Universities on the 1933 tour, or were played against England in Test matches. He was considered something of a joker and carried a rubber stamp with his signature on to save time went asked to provide and autograph or two! Da Costa has the unenviable distinction of being the first West Indian Test cricketer to die but no obituary originally appeared within the covers

Wisden ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

for him.

Sources

# ''World Cricketers - A Biographical Dictionary'' by Christopher Martin-Jenkins published by Oxford University Press (1996), # ''The Wisden Book of Test Cricket, Volume 1 (1877-1977)'' compiled and edited by Bill Frindall published by Headline Book Publishing (1995), # ''The Complete Record of West Indian Test Cricketers'' by Bridgette Lawrence & Ray Goble published by ACL & Polar Publishing (UK) Ltd. (1991),

External links

*
Photograph of Ivan Barrow and Oscar Da Costa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Da Costa, Oscar 1907 births 1936 deaths West Indies Test cricketers Jamaican cricketers Jamaica cricketers Cricketers from Kingston, Jamaica