W.I’s 500th Test and my tenuous claim to cricketing fame!

Sep 21, 2014 Countryman, Features / Columnists

---

Countryman – Stories about life, in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective

By Dennis Nichols
Earlier this week I had cause to reflect on what an intimate part of Caribbean cricket history I am, both as a Guyanese and an individual, and more so with West Indies’ 500th test match being played out in St. Lucia with Bangladesh.

First, let me say that although I love cricket, I am not an aficionado of the game. The closest I came to cricketing fame was playing once as a Substitute in a Wight Cup match for Queen’s College, having a passing acquaintance with Colin Croft when he was a student at Central High School, and hearing that Clive Lloyd was once ‘interested’ in one of my sisters. That was in the sixties.
But here is the nexus. First of all, two of my countrymen, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Leon Johnson, who are currently playing in the regional side, are part of a grand continuum of Guyanese cricketers who have represented our country at the highest level in the game. Furthermore, this pair bridges a 20-year span embracing the most experienced and the most recently-capped players in the current West Indies team. One is headed for the cricket record books; the other no doubt apprehends that his name, for the time, is being written as a ‘promissory’ entry in the West Indies cricket log.
Secondly, as a Caribbean man, I must acknowledge the part cricket has played in helping to shape that unique West Indian persona, and pride, that is part of my heritage. I recall Barbadian author George Lamming, saying more than two decades ago at a Carifesta symposium, (paraphrasing) that Caribbean integration was long being achieved at the grassroots level in the region through sports, especially cricket, and that only the politicians didn’t seem to recognize the fact. For my part, I claimed a growing awareness of this idea, and a conscious desire to promote it.
But my strongest, yet rather tenuous, claim to intimacy with the regional cricket fraternity, is that I am related by blood to one of the finest and most respected players the West Indies has produced, the late Sir Frank Mortimer Maglinne Worrell.
Although I have never been able to substantiate this with documentation, I have my mother’s word for it, and that is more than enough for me. My mother’s maiden surname was Worrell. Her father, William Worrell was a Sergeant-Major in the Guyana Police Force who had emigrated from Barbados in the late nineteenth century. If I remember correctly, she said that he was a first cousin of Frank’s, and always spoke of their kinship, sometimes with pride, but often in a matter-of-fact way.

She had related to us, her children, that my grandfather was in charge of the Anna Regina Immigration Depot on the Essequibo Coast, and that when he died, there was a poignant outpouring of genuine grief and shock from members of the department and from residents in the area who reflected on his gentlemanly demeanour. When Sir Frank died, sentiments about a similar disposition were shared across the Caribbean and further afield, validating in my mind, my mother’s assertion of being related to him, and of a more general West Indian kinship.
An even more tenuous connection to West Indies cricket fame was knowing the son of the legendary Clyde Walcott, Ian, who attended Queen’s College while his father worked with Booker Sugar Estates. We were in the same house, Weston, and Ian had, as far as I knew, the only bicycle at Q.C with a speedometer attached to it. He would leave it in the bike shed during lunch hour, and I would ride it, having drunk my daily quota of bicycle oil. Of course, the fact that his father had played cricket with my cousin was factored into the claim on his bicycle.
I started playing coconut-branch-and bumper-ball cricket at about the age of seven or eight in the schoolyard of Stanleyville Methodist where my father was headmaster. Later, in the early sixties, I started listening to radio commentary on the exploits of Sobers, Hall and Griffith, Kanhai, Butcher and Gibbs, and later still, on the plethora of players who represented the regional team in the decades before television came to Guyana. On a few occasions my father took me to Bourda to watch a day or two of test match or Shell Shield cricket.
I was on the ground that traumatic day for cricket fans, in 1968, when England forced a draw with West Indies, as Umpire Cecil Kippins ended the match with two minutes apparently still on the clock and one English batsman to dislodge, which would have given us the match and levelled the series. Some fans reacted immediately and aggressively by throwing bottles and bricks, and the poor umpire along with players had to flee the field for the sanctuary of the players’ pavilion.
Regretfully, I wasn’t at Bourda when Clive Lloyd executed one of his magnificent innings there or when Hooper and Chanderpaul were ‘tearing tail’ in 2002 against India, (Hooper 233; Chanderpaul 140) or in Antigua when Narsingh Deonarine planted his foot and lifted the penultimate ball of the match for a six in the last over to give Guyana victory in the inaugural Stanford 20/20 final there in 2006.
These, and countless other exploits by our players on cricket swards around the world constitute an essential element of what it means to be Guyanese, and West Indian. It’s one of the very few things (maybe along with soca/reggae) that make us truly feel the rhythm of the region, even here in mud-washed Guyana.
Divisive issues such as race, class, economic status and insularity are for the most part forgotten in the chess-like thrill and thrall of attack and defence strategy that is like no other sport on earth. (Pity the uninitiated who have to navigate the maze of cricket terms and field positions, like bowling a maiden over with a slip, two fine legs, and a deep gully in place)
Ah, the ‘uniquity’ of the sport! I still get a thrill, or at least a tingle, when I get the chance to see a game of cricket being played, be it at the Providence Stadium, by the seawall, or in the National Park, where I go once in a while to swing the bat with my sons, and more lately with my granddaughters. And I, along with Guyanese of every social stratum, will be holding my breath as ‘Tiger’ Chanderpaul plays the shot that eclipses Brian Lara’s W.I run record. Then I will exhale, and vicariously bask in the moment of his glory, and mine.

---

---