Dear Editor,
Many thanks to Edwin Seeraj for reviving my memories of Roy Clifton Fredericks. His piece in the Sunday Chronicle of September 5, 2010, aroused a range of emotions, deriving from my own close relationship with Roy.
For one, I found it an interesting coincidence that this memoralisation of a Berbice, Guyana and West Indies cricket icon should appear at the same time our latest generation of cricketing talent was about to depart these shores to participate in the Airtel T20 Champions League in South Africa. I wondered how many of these young men would have heard of Roy and the heroes of his time, Kallicharran, Baichan, Camacho, for starters, and the inimitable Kanhai, amongst those mentioned in Seeraj’s article. One wondered if any of the team and its officials were numbered amongst those who still discuss Roy “with fervency and unbridled glee”; and perhaps, most significantly, whether any of them had read the article at all.
The point is made once more of the dire need for us to translate Seeraj’s words, and countless other words about other sporting heroes, into more tangible images that can be better appreciated, honoured and “gleefully discussed.”
It is a sobering reflection of our indifference to history and the inspiration it imbues, that, for example, there are no substantial memorials in the whole of Berbice (and particularly in Port Mourant and Blairmont) to the impressive list of historic achievers identified with the county’s cricket. Again Kanhai, Butcher, Solomon, Baichan, Fredericks, and the pioneering, almost pre-historic John, Trim; as well as those many unsung heroes who contributed to the organisation and sustainability of Berbice’s cricket, like Rex Ramnarace and the original Chetram Singh (a highly qualified hospital administrator) who in my time was President of the then Berbice Cricket Board of Control.
Roy Fredericks came out of Ithaca Village – the home of two earlier national openers – Paul and Amsterdam – next door to Blairmont, where he played for the Community Centre in the region’s first class competition. He batted regularly at No 7. In fact the first time he opened an innings was in his debut trial match at the GCC Ground, Bourda. And he was only admitted to selection after I personally convinced Clyde Walcott, a selector (if not Chairman) at the time, and also the sugar industry’s chief sports advisor, that Roy was a worthy candidate, even though he had not yet represented Berbice County.
I was then the Assistant Personnel Manager at Blairmont Estate, and was an opening bowler in the same team as Roy. His potential was almost threatening. For someone who had never seen even a first-class cricket match outside of Berbice (there was no TV), the strokes he played then had to be sheer invention. One in particular he carried through to Test cricket, which was to cost him his wicket too many times until it was perfected – it was a ‘cut’ that thrived unerringly through the fielders at backward point and third man to a certain boundary.
Roy who had previously represented Guyana at table tennis, had an instinctive eye for angles, which he exploited in his batting, and later at squash.
Immediately after each tour he would visit me to discuss his, and my own distant, analysis, of how he fared. By that time I was no longer a mentor, but a devoted fan.
It is that devotion, thanks to Seeraj, that has awakened this memorial. As it turned out, however, when he was appointed Minister of Sports, he sought me out again in an advisory capacity.
I shall always be glad that I was able to make a contribution.
Yours faithfully,
Earl B John
