What a great honour this is!
This is one of the great Clubs of the world!
I am delighted to have been invited – but of course I am also filled with trepidation.
A very distinguished and very elderly friend of mine recently told me that for him nowadays the worst part of making a speech was actually getting to the podium – the stumbling steps, the looks of concern on the faces of the audience, a few hands even half-outstretched to help, the final grab for the podium as if it was a hospital walker. I understand that. I am not quite there yet – but not far from it. And I did tell your President when he invited me that really I felt I should be able to get up, dodder to my speaking place, utter a few words of heartfelt thanks for the honour of appearing atall and then be allowed to get on with the refreshments and in particular the best rum available. He told me that was indeed an option I had but he was hoping for something a little more than that!
So here I am talking to you at this great Club which deserves the honour of great words which for sure I can never sufficiently deliver.
One thing I know I have to avoid like the plague is the mistake of speaking overlong. A guest speaker, I suppose is allowed a little leeway – but not much. One should always be aware of the rule attributed to Winston Churchill – “Be alert when you are speaking if you notice people looking at their watches – but when you see them actually shaking them – stop at once.” Have your watches ready.
I do indeed feel very honoured to be invited here. This Club is in the background of my life. My family has been intertwined in the Club’s history. My mother was a Seheult and by birth and marriage connected to a dozen families who have given members to Queens Park down the generations. Indeed, I understand from that great recorder of your history, Stephen Almandoz, that a Seheult was one of the very early members of the Club way back in the early 1900s. Grays and De Verteuils and Maingots and De Lapeyrouses and Rostants and De La Bastides and many others all are spotted in my family tree and I believe in your membership rolls through the years.
And there was Uncle Bertie, I remember him as a hero in the family when I was a little boy – Uncle Bertie, Bertie Harragin who was a founding member of the Club and who graces your records as one of the great ones and is shown, I am proud to see, in the Club’s mural.
I remember him as a tall, smiling, distinguished man who was always kind to me yet never condescending as most adults are to children. He died when I was eight years old. He was famous in the family as a great athlete and cricketer. He captained Trinidad to numerous Intercolonial victories, the last, astonishingly, when he was 55. He was on the West Indies tour of England in 1906 and family rumour – which I have since confirmed as fact – had it that in the first match of the tour in a sparkling innings of 50 he had the temerity to hit the Grand Old Man of Cricket, W.G. Grace, for six sixes. C.L.R. James, in the greatest book ever written about cricket, Beyond A Boundary, wrote the following about Uncle Bertie:
“Old Constantine was an independent spirit. Cricket must have meant a great deal to him. Yet when some dispute broke out with the authorities he refused to play any more. One who saw it told me how A.E. Harragin left the Queen’s Park pavilion, walked over to where Constantine was sitting in the stands and persuaded him to come back. Few people in Trinidad, white or black, could refuse Bertie Harragin anything. He was an all-round athlete of rare powers, of singular honesty and charm. I would have accepted any cricket pronouncement of his at face value.”
My Uncle Bertie Harragin – one of your Club’s foremost members.
I cannot remember why I myself never became a member of Queen’s Park – it is so long ago. The Club was so much in my life that I certainly might have become a member but I never did. If I had become a member then – perhaps a junior member – more than 60 years ago, I think I might by now have been in that honoured list of very oldest members – even perhaps with a special chair at the bar or vantage point for Test matches. But in those long-gone days I was at Tranquility playing tennis most afternoons so perhaps that is why I never joined Queen’s Park before I left to go Cambridge at the age of 18.
In any case by then the Club was part of my life since I was here faithfully every time there was Intercolonial or Test cricket – always red letter days in my life as I walked down from QRC to the Oval for the cricket, my mind ablaze with anticipation.
I could spend the rest of tonight remembering those days but let one memory stand for them all – one scene from that glittering cinema of replays in my mind.
It is nearly seventy years ago but as if it was yesterday I see myself again a schoolboy walking with the utmost eagerness and expectation into this hallowed ground to watch the first Test match I ever saw – in 1948. Those memories of excited expectation – the hubbub of the crowd getting ready to participate in a great ceremony, my friends and I scrambling to get a good seat in the Schoolboys Stand laughing and shouting, the players appearing from the pavilion giving all our hearts a lift of jubilant elation, the immense silence just before the first ball bowled, the gathering joyous noise as the bowler runs in to deliver that first ball, the collective sigh of contentment as the game gets underway, the sun and the wind and the overarching sky sheltering this special piece of earth, the indescribable feeling that life is very good – all that and a young lifetime more come back from that first Test match I ever saw and has been repeated again and again over the years as I have gone to watch West Indies play. As I speak I feel the joy and eagerness of expectant excitement begin to rise again as of old. It will never change. It is one description of happiness.
Of actual play in that first Test match I ever saw I do not remember very much, except the dogged batting of Andy Ganteaume. I have to look up the details to find the match was drawn, that a stop-gap wicket-keeper called Griffith made 140 in his first ever Test innings for England, that Berkeley Gaskin, who was to become such a good friend when I went to live in British Guiana, bowled 37 overs for 72 runs and took 1 wicket in the first innings and that the jovially ugly and tremendously popular Wilfred Ferguson of the shining bald dome took eleven wickets in the match. Almost unbelievably I also have to be reminded from the records that Frank Worrell scored 97 in the first innings. Who can doubt that every one of those runs were made with the easy, nonchalant elegance which was the trademark of that charismatic cricketer. I cannot think of Worrell’s runs being marked on a score sheet. They were always inscribed on an illuminated scroll. Yet I have no precise memory of his innings at the Oval Test match in 1948. But I do retain a long-lasting impression of Andy Ganteaume’s workmanlike, determined, gradually accumulated 112. He wrung that century out of the English bowlers by the sweat of his brow and with a strong and concentrated mind faithful to our cause. I remember the rising anxiety we all felt as he approached his century – this unexpected hero who suddenly entered the side when Stollmeyer could not play at the last minute – and I remember the sense of pride and relief when he got there.
But I should be getting on with it, not simply indulging myself with age-old memories. But let me tell you – they were shining memories!
I know I am speaking at one of the great and storied Clubs of West Indian cricket – yet I cannot bring myself to talk very much tonight about West Indies cricket. I am too heart-sick. I have written hundreds of articles on West Indies cricket over the years – and I spent eight intensely interesting months of my life with P.J Patterson and Alister Mc Intyre when we made the visits and did the research and conducted the interviews and wrote the text of what went into the Patterson Report of 2007. So I have had my say. I am just sad that’s all – and I hope and pray for better things.
But I will remind members of this great Club of one thing we said in the Patterson Report which is paramountly true and that is – “West Indies Cricket does not belong to the West Indies Cricket Board – it belongs to the West Indian people”. That is the principle which should guide all our decisions and unless and until the governance of West Indies Cricket reflects that principle we will not ever get out of the utterly discreditable mess we are in. The strange thing is that at our very first meeting with the West Indies Cricket Board they enthusiastically endorsed the principle we enunciated – then never did anything to carry it into effect.
And one other thing on this. There is a recent ruling by the Supreme Court of India in a case involving the Indian Cricket Board which we should carefully take into consideration. Dr. Kusha Haraksingh, distinguished Dean of Law at the UWI in St. Augustine, has written very tellingly on this ruling which, he points out, establishes guidelines for the private control of a public good which are relevant to our own West Indian circumstances. The Supreme Court of India concluded their decision with these words which, as Dr. Haraksingh points out, surely apply to us:
“any organization or entity that has such pervasive control over the game and its affairs as can make dreams end up in smoke or come true cannot be said to be undertaking any private activity. The functions of the Board are clearly public functions which …remain in the nature of public functions, no matter discharged by a society registered under the Registration of Societies Act. Suffice it to say that if the government not only allows an autonomous/private body to discharge functions which it could in law take over or regulate but even lends its assistance to such a non-government body to undertake such functions which by their very nature are public functions, it cannot be said that the functions are not public functions or that the entity discharging the same is not answerable on the standards generally applicable to judicial review of State action.”
Those words should be taken to heart.
What I will now speak about is a different, but related, subject – one which, I think, has relevance not only to this great Club but also to all Sporting Associations. I will be aiming to indicate what principles should guide the running of an organization so that it fulfills nothing less than its highest ideals and highest purpose. Very high and glorious that sounds I know – but why should we aim at anything less than the best and greatest in our lives.
My theme is what goes into the making of a great Club. And since no one can doubt that Queens Park is one of the greatest Clubs in our whole region you can test what I have to say against what you already have in your possession to care for and cultivate as you would any precious possession.
So let me list my seven principles which go into the making of a Great Club.
Underlying everything are good administration and solid financing. These are not the glamourous, head-line-attracting side of Clubs and Sporting Associations but, trust me, getting them right day in and day out, year in and year out is absolutely vital. Let good administration and solid financing falter and fail and big trouble looms. So let me start with these boring but fundamental requirements.
One. A great Club has to get its administration right. This means:
- Putting dedicated people in charge whose priority is the good of the Club and not personal position, power, privilege or influence.
- Ensuring that the nuts and bolts are assiduously attended to: audited annual accounts and reports, membership meetings properly and regularly conducted, a strategic plan kept up to date and approved by members.
Two. A great Club has to have solid financing. Never let this slip – it means:
- Paying constant attention to revenue generation and fund raising.
- Involving members in what is needed and what is planned and how they can help.
- Accounts meticulously kept in order and up to date and maintaining the strong presence of internal audit.
So moving on. Three. A great Club must, of course, have a clear sense of mission – what it was founded for, what purpose drives it forward, what aims beyond mere existing does it have. But not only this – a sense of mission must be constantly refreshed, revisited, given new impetus and inspiration by succeeding generations.
Four. In close tandem with a sense of mission there must be a sense of history, a feeling for tradition. The records must be preserved, the history must be written, the heroes must be remembered, the great deeds commemorated, the hall of fame kept up to date.
The new generations should always be aware that they are adding to a long and honourable tradition of achievement. Quite apart from anything else such awareness contributes to better performance on the field of play – it is a motivational force.
In this respect at Queens Park you have a priceless asset in your Museum. It is a magnificent repository of your history and cricket’s history. Treasure it, take pride in it, enhance it, add to it as the years go by. I urge this on you. I understand there is a suggestion that a Cricket Library might be established at the Club. Surely this is an idea whose time has come – to complement the Museum. Why not aim to inaugurate such a project to mark the 125th Anniversary of your founding next year. I pledge to contribute my own cricket library to the Club for such a purpose. Make it over the years one of the great cricket libraries of the world.
Five. A great Club must pay attention to instilling in its membership awareness and pride in what the Club stands for and contributes and achieves. Never let it come to be looked upon simply as a privileged gathering place with perquisites.
Not to say that it should not be a place of entertainment and good fellowship and enjoyment of the activities that any good Club provides. But that is not the be-all and end-all of it. A Club is not great because of its bar and its spectator rights and its fun days.
Which leads naturally to Six. And something I touched upon earlier. A great Club has to associate itself with its nation’s purpose and its nation’s good. It must certainly never alienate itself from the national mainstream or be at daggers drawn, for instance, with the Government of the day. This does not mean surrendering autonomy of planning and action but it does mean keeping a sure finger on the national pulse in exercising that autonomy. It means sensitivity to what looms large politically. It means keeping in touch with Governments and those who may one day be in Government. It means seeking the pragmatic path between autonomy and partnership. A great Club must incorporate national goals in its planning and in its own aspirations associate itself with national objectives.
Seven. A great Club does not rest on its laurels. It does not sit back and admire what it has done. It generates new ideas. It brings forward new faces. It promotes vigorous discussion. It understands old principles but sets new goals. It does not grow stale. It must be great in every generation.
Good administration. Solid financing. A sense of mission coupled with a sense of history. Pride in its membership. A concern for national purpose. An impulse to keep renewing itself.
These seven simple principles that go into the making of a great Club may seem elementary and to go without saying. But, let me assure you, they are fundamental and must never be taken for granted.
As far as I can tell, your great Club has neglected none of my seven principles, failed none of the tests these demand, and is forging ahead successfully. But do not become complacent. Let me assure you – it is all too easy for cracks to appear and widen, for fundamentals to be forgotten, for standards to drop, for institutions to be neglected and for failure gradually to set in. Do not let that happen. You must not ever let that happen.
Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for listening to me. I am deeply honoured.
And I will feel doubly honoured, Mr. President and members, if you will allow me now to propose the toast to this club, the Queens Park Cricket Club, one of the world’s greatest clubs – long may it flourish in achievement and in fame.
