By Cosmo Hamilton
I recall as a child at Mahaicony having difficulty sleeping the night before travelling to Georgetown on the train to see my first Test match at Bourda in 1953 between West Indies and India. My mother had taken the bold decision to allow me not only to travel to the city with a group of family friends – the Burkes, but to stay overnight with them in Kitty so that I could see a full day’s play in a Test match at the tender age of 9. And I remember feeling goose bumps and having a nervous stomach as I approached the GCC ground Bourda to line up and cross the little footbridge that led to the gate on North Road that opened up to the school children’s stand at the most beautiful cricket ground that I had ever seen. As you made your way to the ground, the excitement would build as you heard ball by ball commentary of Peter Bailey and Kenny Wishart wafting through the air from radios in the neighborhood.
What seemed then like giant over-hanging Saman trees around appeared to protect this hallowed ground. And as you entered this storied sward the white members pavilion with the green roof stood out majestically over the lush perfectly manicured field. This is where I first set eyes on the 3 W’s – Everton DeCourcy Weekes, Frank Maglinne Worrell, and Clyde Leopold Walcott whom I had idolized and mimicked so often in my backyard , and the opening pair of Jeffrey Stollmeyer and our very own bespectacled Bruce Pairaudeau.
The Indian players on the other side included the prolific opening pair of Pankaj Roy and M. L. Apte, and a heavy hitting middle order of Polly Umrigar and Vijay Manjrekar along with the great allrounder Vinoo Mankad and one of the best legspinners of all time Subhas Gupte. They were led by a stoic skipper named Vijay Hazare. India lost the Five Test series One-Nil but they won the hearts of cricket fans in Guyana in particular, and throughout the Caribbean with several stellar individual performances and an almost flawless fielding display.
From that day on to an impressionable cricket-crazy youth, Bourda was the ultimate cricket venue and those who had the good fortune to have played there would have been considered the anointed no less. Bourda had achieved worldwide acclaim and during its heyday, fans spoke of this cricket ground with affection and reverence. And so when enlightened management in recognition of their iconic status as world class players adorned the stands at this historic field with the names of outstanding Guyanese cricket heroes Lance Gibbs, Rohan Kanhai and Clive Lloyd, much like the Kensington Oval in Barbados had done for the legendary 3 W’s and Sir Garfield Sobers, it was like the late lamented artist Pablo Picasso putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece.
Over the next half a century since my first visit to Bourda many a legend has come down those pavilion steps and graced the sacred field, many a record has been set and broken there by cricketers who have dominated the annals of cricket history – from the aforementioned to Sir Lenoard Hutton to Richie Benaud, to the Chappell brothers, to Hanif Mohammad and Sunil Gavaskar and countless others. Bourda was known the world over as a batsman’s paradise.
But it was Benjamin Disraeli who said way back in 1867 – “Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant.” And more recently singer songwriter Bob Dylan famously wrote -“For the times, they are a- changin’.” And so it was with this quaint Georgetown Cricket Club ground with all of its rich history and fond memories with its limited infrastructure, evidently became just too small and inadequate for the rapid development of modern day international cricket. In 2007 ICC World Cup Cricket came to the Caribbean and the GCC could not be transformed into a state of the art venue to host the event as did Kensington Oval in Barbados, or be upgraded suitably as did the Queens Park Oval in Trinidad and Tobago, and Sabina Park in Jamaica.
So the headquarters of cricket went from an urban to a spacious suburban location at Providence on the East Bank– a spanking new modern facility known, unlike all of its counterparts in the Caribbean as simply the National Stadium
and leaving Guyana’s great cricket heroes behind at Bourda perhaps forlorn and forgotten still hanging from dilapidated signs, no longer viewed by throngs of appreciative fans. Surely Messers Lloyd, Kanhai, and Gibbs for all of their achievements and what those have meant not only to Guyana but to the Caribbean and to the world, deserve much better than to be ignored in such a callous manner.
Certainly the authorities responsible for such matters relating to the advancement of international cricket in Guyana, in recognition of the game’s rich tradition in this republic should at a minimum appropriately name the country’s cricket headquarters at Providence, and properly re-designate the names of Clive Lloyd, Rohan Kanhai, and Lance Gibbs to respective stands around the facility, while adding the names of Joe Solomon, Basil Butcher,
Alvin Kallicharan, Roy Fredericks, and Shivnarine Chanderpaul to
stands or gates at the stadium in a grand dedication ceremony with all present except the late left handed opening batsman.
With recent successes in local youth cricket as well as the Amazon Warriors’ admirable performance in the burgeoning Limacol Caribbean Premier League, it is as good a time as any to individualize the stadium and to immortalize the greats for the Heytemeyers, and the Sattaurs and the Chanderpauls to touch and revere and emulate.
