Waiting in the cricket line; then and now

May 20, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Michael Jordan, one of the senior editors at this newspaper asked me; “Do you remember what it was like when you were a small boy waiting in the line to go into Bourda to see Test matches?” My answer was yes. Mike went on, “Then, write on what it was like then at Bourda and now at Providence.”
I told Mike I can remember those days at Bourda on New Garden Street and Regent Road but I haven’t a clue what the ambience and feeling are like outside Providence in the line waiting to see a cricket match. I have not returned to a cricket match in Guyana since I left to study abroad in 1978 months after I got married. I have never seen the inside of Providence Stadium.
My dad was the deputy groundsman to “Badge” Menezies at the GCC where all Test matches in Guyana were played. This was in the fifties. “Badge” remains the only Guyanese Portuguese groundsman in the history of this country. He was the common-law husband of my aunt (my mom’s sister). When he retired, my dad took over. “Badge” came to live next to us on Durban Street, Wortmanville. He opened a bicycle repair shop at the front of the house and I was one of the tube patchers. I was a teenager then.
I have vivid memories of cricket at Bourda, some pleasant, some sad. I have some fairly good memories of what the lines were outside the ground even though I did not have to join. I was a fixture at my father’s workplace so I had no hassle getting in. But my brothers and sisters had to join the queue. There were two entrances for the ordinary folks; one on North Road, the other on Regent Street. The New Garden Street access was for the upper class and middle class folks. The most popular of the three pathways was on Regent Street. Then, there was the Vlissengen Road entrance next to the GFC. There the stands were uncovered and sun stroke could visit anytime. It had the cheapest entrance fee. One of the scoreboards stood there.
The lines began very early in the mornings, and when I say early, we are talking from 4 am onwards. This was the time of placid Guyana.
No one travelled to Bourda cricket ground at that uncivilized hour and feared being robbed. It was a time when Guyana still had its collective soul and criminal attacks were as rare as elephants in Georgetown.
At that time Guyana had only one elephant near to the GCC. She was housed in the zoo in the Botanical Gardens. Her name was Kamla and she was a personal gift from Prime Minister Indira Ghandi of India to Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. Sorry to detain you with this but Kamla died when there was a thunderstorm. An electric cable snapped in the zoo and electrocuted her.
The atmosphere in the Regent Road lines for Test cricket at Bourda in the sixties maybe is gone forever. That is the zeitgeist that maybe will never return. History is about succeeding zeitgeists and that inviting milieu outside Bourda in the sixties is lost forever. People loved being in the lines early because of the camaraderie that was shared.
There was no presence of the “black maan or collie maan.” Guyanese went to Bourda to meet other Guyanese and see cricket.
I know two things I can remember for sure. One was the total absence of stampede when the gates were open at 7 am, and secondly, the gatemen never frisked the attendee as they passed through the turnstiles.
It would take columns after columns to write about my experience growing up at GCC with my dad. Forgive my lapse into chauvinism but the publication of some of those memories would no doubt be found to be more than intriguing to the present generation. No doubt they will be captured in my memoirs if and when I get down to writing them.
Since Michael Jordan wanted my description of the external environment and not inside the cricket ground, I will end with what I saw with my own two eyes in those lines standing next to my siblings.
Without exception, most fans carried baskets with sandwiches. In those days, the beverage would either be bottled soda or home-made lime water (we called it swank back then.) Fruit juices were definitely not in vogue. By the time the gates were opened, most of the contents in those baskets would have been eaten up.

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