Joseph A. Small was a West Indian

West Indian cricket team

The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...

 cricketer

Cricketer

A cricketer is a person who plays the sport of cricket. Official and long-established cricket publications prefer the traditional word "cricketer" over the rarely used term "cricket player"....

 who played in West Indies' first Test in their inaugural Test tour of England

West Indian cricket team in England in 1928

The West Indian cricket team that toured England in the 1928 season was the first to play Test cricket. The team was not very successful, losing all three Tests by an innings and winning only five of the 30 first-class matches played....

.

Small was born in Princes Town

Princes Town

Princes Town is a town in southern Trinidad .Originally founded as the Amerindian Mission of Savana Grande, the town was renamed after the 1880 visit by Queen Victoria's grandsons, Prince Albert and Prince George...

, Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

. He was one of the many West Indian cricketers of his time whose Test career started at an advanced age; he was 35 in his first Test. He also scored the first fifty in a Test by a West Indian in the Test at Lord's in 1928.

"International cricketers," wrote C. L. R. James

C. L. R. James

Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts...

 in recollection of Small's enthusiasm when, as a boy, the writer bowled to him the Queen's Park Savannah

Queen's Park Savannah

Port of Spain's largest open space—and the world's largest traffic roundabout—is the Queen's Park Savannah, known colloquially simply as "the Savannah". It occupies about of level land, and the distance around the perimeter is about 2.2 mi...

, "are not as ordinary men. There might be only two boys fielding, but if you bowled Joe a half-volley outside the off stump, he hit with all his force, though he would have to wait until the ball came back from 150 yards."

Small died in Forest Reserve, Trinidad, at the age of 65.