In the dashing era of 1960s Caribbean cricket, Basil Butcher was the sturdy backbone around which many a fine West Indies score or victory was built. Although a stellar batsman in his own right, the unassuming Butcher, who has died aged 86, was generally content to play second fiddle in the middle order to whoever was at the crease – confident in the expectation that when the big guns were gone he would still be there, pushing the total to respectability and beyond.

In this vein he was at the very heart of the Frank Worrell-led West Indies team that established the Caribbean as a premier cricketing force and captivated the Commonwealth with the vibrancy of its play. While not technically as correct as some of his colleagues, he possessed a tremendously solid defence as well as a good eye and an ability to punish the bad ball – qualities that allowed him to build many substantial innings. In his 44 Test matches from 1958 to 1969 he scored 3,104 runs at an average of 43.11, including seven centuries.

Usually appearing at No 4, Butcher’s most important asset was his ability to glue together an innings and to act as a calming buffer (at the behest of Worrell) between the belligerent figures of Rohan Kanhai at No 3 and Garfield Sobers at No 5. A modest and intelligent man, he had no difficulty adapting to what some might have seen as this diminished role, which he rightly viewed both as a privilege and as of great value to the team.

Along with Kanhai and Joe Solomon, Butcher was one of a triumvirate of outstanding batsmen to emerge in the late 50s from the remarkable, progressively run sugar plantation of Port Mourant, remotely situated in the low-lying, backwater fields of what was then British Guiana (now Guyana). Under the watchful eye of the great Barbadian batsman Clyde Walcott, who was employed by the local Sugar Producers’ Association as a cricket organiser at Port Mourant and other estates, he blossomed into a prodigious if slightly unorthodox talent.

The only son of seven children born to Matilda, a Guyanese of Amerindian descent, and Ethelbert, a Barbadian who had migrated to British Guiana, Butcher was born in Port Mourant and went to Corentyne high school, where he harboured ideas of attending university. But he came to the conclusion that he might gain a wider education, and perhaps a better living, through cricket. Biding his time variously as a schoolteacher, a public works clerk, an insurance salesman and a welfare officer, he honed his game at Port Mourant sports club and made his debut for British Guiana against Barbados in 1955.

His first game for the West Indies came three years later at the age of 25 in late 1958, when he scored 64 not out against India in Bombay (now Mumbai), despite sustaining a leg injury that prevented him from running properly. He finished the tour of India and Pakistan with two centuries and 619 runs at an average of 56.27. After three poor scores in two home Tests against England in 1960, he spent a difficult period in the wilderness until re-selected for the 1963 trip to England, where he picked up on his earlier form.

In the second Test at Lord’s that year he made a memorably gritty 133 in his team’s second innings total of 229, securing an against-the-odds draw in the process and, arguably, laying the foundation for a West Indies series win. That towering display, which he rated as the best of his life, was all the more remarkable for the fact that a few minutes before walking out to bat he had received the distressing news that his wife, Pam, had suffered a miscarriage.

Averaging 47.87 in the series, Butcher thereafter became a fixture in the side. Rated by the Australian captain Richie Benaud as the most difficult of all West Indians to dismiss, he was a sometimes grim counterpoint to the stereotype of carefree “calypso cricket”, and was a fiercely determined fighter for the team cause. Wisden noted wryly that “he has been known to smile during an innings, but rarely before the 400th run”.

His highest score, 209 not out against England at Trent Bridge in the third Test in 1966, typified Butcher’s obdurate, resilient approach; it was a seven-and-a-half-hour marathon that brought West Indies a surprise victory when defeat had seemed more likely. Even in his last Test match, against England at Headingley in 1969, he had looked poised to engineer another remarkable turnaround, until he perished on 91. During that tour he had the misfortune to be acting captain in the absence of an injured Sobers when West Indies were bowled out by Ireland for 25 on a rain-sodden pitch in Sion Mills, County Tyrone.

Aged 37, Butcher called a voluntary halt to his Test career at that stage, and as a valedictory gesture was chosen as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1970. In his first-class career he had played 169 matches with a batting average of 49.90, and had taken 40 wickets with his occasional leg-spin, producing a best return of five for 34 against England in the fourth Test at Trinidad in 1968. Although he never played for an English county, he had appeared with distinction as a professional in Lancashire league cricket with Lowerhouse and Bacup during the 60s.

Back in Guyana after his cricketing career, Butcher worked in public relations for a bauxite company in the town of Linden, where he also ran a sports goods shop. Although his children later set up home in the US and he died in Florida, for a number of years he remained committed to his homeland when others migrated during tough economic times.

Always interested in politics, for a period he was part of a Guyanese civic movement that attempted to bridge the divide in the country between those of Indian and African descent, a schism he had experienced painfully in 1964 when a racially motivated arson attempt on the family home led him to leave Port Mourant. He also became involved in cricket administration as a West Indies selector, and personally funded a trust fund bearing his name that helped young players in the Berbice region, which contains Port Mourant.

He is survived by Pam (nee Liverpool), whom he married in 1962, and by his children, Brian, Bruce, Basil Jnr and Blossom.

• Basil Fitzherbert Butcher, cricketer, born 3 September 1933, died 16 December 2019