I thought that our cricketing sentimentalists could at least have been afforded a requiem for Bourda, some dignified tribute to bring closure to those whose sense of cricketing history have left them with a deep understanding of Bourda’s service to test cricket and of what we must now leave behind; there could have been some grand or even less than grand ‘sendoff,’ some occasion for reminiscences and reflections on Bourda’s past glories, its unique place in this region’s cricketing history.
But that was not to be. Even the promised three-day game against the visiting Sri Lankans never materialized and to add insult to injury no reason was given. The traditionalists allowed the sleight to pass without murmur. Perhaps the handful of old-stagers still left behind have no appetite for protest, no energy left to frown on Bourda’s unceremonious and unmarked interment as a test venue, or perhaps they know only too well that the winds of change that are sweeping the game of cricket itself, are uncaring of history and that the focus of those who are preoccupied with reinventing the game is solely on its survival. I think that Bourda deserved better.
Mind you, I am no sentimentalist. One always felt that Bourda would eventually become too small a stage on which to accommodate what cricket has become. Still, the bowling of the first ball in a test match at Providence – our new home for test cricket- without so much as a last hurrah for Bourda attests to that lack of mindfulness for history with which the game is being reinvented. .
In a sense, the fate of Bourda symbolizes the quiet setting aside of the traditions that have marked eighty years of West Indies cricket in deference to a new game, driven by mega-materialism, technology, corporate sponsorship and far bigger television audiences and paying spectators. These are the realities that cricket simply had to come to terms with if the game was to remain alive and Bourda was a ‘victim’ of that ‘globalization’ of the game.
It is much the same, I suppose, with other facets of that globalization of the game.
Changing circumstances demand that we set aside old structures, old ways of doing things and abandon old axioms that are no longer workable in an age where our survival demands a greater appreciation of the realities of interdependence; in much the same way that we have finally discovered, for example, the reality of climate change and its attendant environmental degradation and in the process are compelled to seriously contemplate changes in the ways in which we undertake our socio-economic pursuits. Survival has galvanized us into action.
It is the same with cricket. Its survival demands a shedding of old ways, a recognition of changing global circumstances and an understanding of the need to embrace a more universal constituency.
Long before the end came Bourda had begun to lose its shine, the economic realities of its modest crowds and limited room for any real expansion coupled with the long-standing weaknesses of the Guyana dollar rendering it unprofitable as a test venue. However much we may have savoured the intimacy of its smallness, the memories of our cricketing heroes whose names adorn its various stands and ‘de fellas in de trees seeing cricket foh free,’ those traditions counted for little when the winds of change finally swept in.
What Cricket World Cup did was to galvanize Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean into a more acute appreciation of the harsh realities of change. Suddenly, the Bourdas and Sabina Parks and Kensington Ovals were simply not enough to accommodate the world’s premier cricketing showpiece. The hosting of Cricket World Cup demanded more of an unprecedented lavishness – more hotels in more accommodating cities and better-appointed venues where more spectators and better-off followers of the game could view the spectacle of limited overs cricket in conditions that were more than a cut above the spartan facilities that the likes of Bourda have to offer.
And if the new Providence Stadium serves as a symbol that we have in fact moved on, the manner in which it supplanted Bourda symbolizes what the traditionalists might see as the irreverence of change, the unmindfulness of the importance of paying homage to history that characterizes the transformation of cricket. Surely, Bourda deserved better.
Arnon Adams
