Dear Editor,
On Sunday, September 25, the inter-county final between Demerara and Berbice was held at the Albion Sports Complex and ten thousand persons were in attendance. Cricket fans in Berbice, especially in the Upper and Lower Corentyne area, are starved of good cricket, hence the kind of attendance we had on Sunday. And that is why I am hopping mad when I was told on the same Sunday by none other than Mr Anand Sanasie, Secretary of the Guyana Cricket Board, that the regional one day match between Guyana and Barbados that was scheduled to be held at the Albion Sports Complex will no longer be played there, because an inspection team from the West Indies Cricket Board deemed the outfield unfit for regional matches.
Editor, don’t get me wrong; I am not blaming the Guyana or Berbice Boards, or for that matter, GuySuCo for this fiasco. The blame lies squarely at the feet of the politicians of this country. If you can remember some time in June of this year, just before the Berbice Expo was due to be held at the Albion Sports Complex, I wrote a letter to the Stabroek News appealing to the President of this country not to allow Mr Manniram Prashad and the Corentyne Chamber of Commerce to once again destroy the ground.
My appeal fell on deaf ears. The Expo was held in July during the rainy season; the ground was destroyed, and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. The Guyana and Barbados match was removed from the Albion Sports Complex and cricket fans, especially in the Corentyne area, are the losers.
Editor, GuySuCo made a conscious decision not to allow any fairs, shows or expo to be held at the ground because of the amount of damage that was done to it when these events were held there. The ground was to be used solely for cricket, which was its original purpose. It is the only international cricket facility we have in Berbice, and it hosted the first ever one-day international in the West Indies in 1977. And as I said at the start of this letter, cricket fans in the Corentyne area are starved of good cricket and were looking forward to the Guyana vs Barbados match, but it seems that the politicians don’t care. It is a sad day for cricket in Berbice, and the fans are hopping mad.
Yours faithfully,
Imtiaz Baccus
