Milton Pydana – Guyana & West Indies International Cricketer

May 09, 2025 Sports

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By:  Colin Croft – Guyana, Lancashire CCC & West Indies International Cricketer

Kaieteur Sports- Milton Robert Pydana was a good team-mate while playing for Guyana and West Indies.  Born 27 January 1950; died aged 75; 15 April 2025, Pydana made his Guyana debut, as wicket-keeper batter, in then Shell Shield’s regional 4-day tournament, v Barbados, 29 January – 01 February 1971, aged only 21.

Incidentally, three prominent Guyana team-mates; opening batters Roy Fredericks and Steven Camacho and wicket-keeper batter Milton Pydana; have all died of lung cancer.  They smoked incessantly.

Per late legendary actor Sean Connery, “You gotta die of something”, but so many who had smoked so much in the past have died from that dreaded disease.

Lies & Statistics!

In 1970/71, as wicket-keeper for Guyana, Pydana had replaced my aviation mentor, Senior Air Traffic Control Officer / Aviation Manager, Geoffrey “Reds” Murray.  “Reds” always maintained that he wanted to focus on his then young family and growing aviation career.

Note that the other wicket-keepers for WI regional First-Class teams in 1970/1971’s Shell Shield tournament were:  David Murray (Barbados); Michael Findlay (Combined Islands); Desmond Lewis (Jamaica) and Anthony Lewis (Trinidad & Tobago).

So, for scribes, commentators, cricket historians, CWI personnel, and ESPN-Cric-Info, to suggest that “Jeffrey Dujon kept Milton Pydana out of WI cricket teams” is dangerously disingenuous and downright dishonest.  That statement is a palpable lie!!

Jeffrey Dujon, excellent 1970s, 1980s & 1990’s’ Jamaica and WI wicket-keeper, HAD NOT YET played for Jamaica in First Class cricket when Pydana debuted for Guyana in 1970/1971.

It was Pydana who kept himself out of WI teams, with sporadically extremely poor, unconvincing performances for Guyana.  Others simply passed him by, as Pydana never properly established himself for that highest level.

Dujon first played for Jamaica; First Class; v T&T, 21 – 24 March 1975; FOUR YEARS AFTER Pydana had first played for Guyana.  Dujon then debuted for WI; Test; purely as a batter, since WI incumbent wicket-keeper was then David Murray.

Note too that Pydana played his first game for WI, v Pakistan; ODI; 21 November 1980, ONE YEAR BEFORE Dujon made his WI debut; Test; v Australia, 26 – 30 December 1981.

Overall, Pydana played 85 First Class games; 1970/71 to 1987/88; and three ODI’s for WI.  Having played for 17 + years, Pydana should have been much more productive.  85 F-C games; 2 centuries.  That is extremely poor production for a wicket-keeper batter, which negatively affected Pydana’s WI team candidacy.

Guyana’s Best Wicket-Keeper in the 1970s & 1980s

As Guyana’s premier fast bowler, from First Class debut in 1971/72, especially 1976/77 to 1982/83; and still, up to now, Guyana’s best fast bowler ever, I can attest that Pydana was the best wicket-keeper that I had played with, under Guyana’s “Golden Arrowhead” flag.  My out-fielding improved tremendously with his help, with so many additional hours of practice.

However, Pydana was also very prone to making major, unfocussed, mistakes behind the stumps, errors which cost him his WI place.  His laissez-faire attitude also suggested that he did not take his cricket-playing situations as seriously as he should have done.

That he did not play more for WI was also due to cricket’s ongoing political infighting, and on Pydana himself, with his almost perpetual cricketing insecurities.

He was not a strong-willed athlete but one who always sought approval, from whomsoever, to boost his inner self.  To be great at any sport, one must be supremely self-confident, even truculent and arrogant.  One needs “belly”.  Remember late Aussie spinner Shane Warne?

Pydana probably would also have played more for WI had then Guyana selectors, in their “jackass-ed-ness”, not rotated Guyana’s wicket-keeping duties; Pydana along with Georgetown Cricket Club’s (GCC) Stephen Bamfield and Surrey CCC’s Lonsdale Skinner.

In my opinion, Skinner was the worst of them, but, somehow, he was selected, in 1976/77, in the prime of Pydana’s skills, simply because Skinner had played for Surrey CCC in UK, an example of the very unintelligent reasonings that covered Guyana’s 1970s cricket.

Unforgettably, in Plymouth, Monserratt, in my breakout Shell Shield season 1976/77, Combined Islands’ Jim Allen, who should have played for WI, had been badly dropped, by Skinner, off Croft’s bowling, a straight-forward catch, when on zero.  Allen blistered 150!

I can also still remember the exact game, with all then WI selectors present, that “dropped” Pydana from WI considerations altogether; Guyana v T&T, Bourda Oval, 23 – 26 January 1981.  It was a significant game in many respects, seriously affecting future WI teams.

Guyana v T&T, Bourda 1981, was played just after our WI team had returned from beating Pakistan in Tests and ODIs, where Pydana had made his ODI debut.  He was flying high.

His first international catch, not correctly credited in tributes at Pydana’s passing, was Javed Miadad c Pydana b Croft = 08, in a rain-affected, low-scoring 40 overs ODI, at Karachi.

Anyway, for Guyana v TT, Bourda 1981, Pydana, noting the presence of all WI selectors, was simply a “serious, palpitating nervous wreck”.  One expected errors.

Guyana, meantime, batting first, were in deep trouble at 112–6.  Only Guyana’s captain Alvin Kallicharran battled T&T’s spinners.  WI captain, Clive Lloyd, having just arrived in Guyana, was then hurriedly helicoptered in from Cheddi Jagan Int’l Airport, courtesy of LFSB.

Remember then Guyana’s President Forbes Burnham open statement that day: “I can do anything I want!”?  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  Oh Gad-do!!  Does that sound familiar these days?

Lloyd batted at No. 8, with Croft due next.  Lloyd and Kallicharran put on 286 runs for that 7^th wicket.  Lloyd made 144 and Kallicharran 184; Guyana’s eventual total 439.

In that game, T&T’s batters Theo Cuffy and Augustine Logie were also vying for WI selection.  Cuffy made a brilliant, chanceless 88.  His one mistake was not to have made 100!

Logie, badly dropped when on zero by wicket-keeper Pydana, off Croft’s bowling, a very straight forward chance, made 64.  Thus, Logie was selected for WI from that innings.  Fact!

Very significantly, that dropped chance from Logie also destroyed Pydana’s WI hopes, allowing Dujon’s selection to WI Tour of Australia 1981/82, where Dujon debuted in Tests.  Cuffy also left T&T permanently, perhaps disillusioned with WI teams selection processes.

So, positively, in his later years, after moving to NYC, Milton Pydana tried to transmit his cricketing knowledge to the next generations.   He even coached USA cricket teams.  Guyana, USA and West Indies has lost a good servant of the game.  May “Py” rest in peace!!

 

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