Dear Editor,
I was saddened to learn of the death of Ivan Madray and Burlin Shaheed last week. Both Ivan Madray and Burlin Shaheed were national cricketers who represented Guyana, Berbice, and Port Mourant as leg spinners and were also useful batsmen. However, Ivan Madray went a step further by representing the West Indies in a few Test matches. Both Madray and Shaheed worked as welfare officers and contributed much to the development of sport in their respective communities.
Ivan Madray represented the West Indies and then British Guiana before I was born in the late ’50s. However, the people of Port Mourant were always proud of the fact that four cricketers from their village, namely, Kanhai, Butcher, Solomon and Madray were in the West Indies team in the same period. I was told that Madray was unlucky not to have had more Test wickets due to a number of dropped catches. I was further advised that Madray was a very deceptive bowler with his legbreaks and googly and Barbados with the 3W’s − Weeks, Worrell and Walcott as well as Sobers had difficulty reading his bowling.
I saw Ivan Madray playing once in a benefit match for Rohan Kanhai in the early ’80s at Port Mourant. Ivan Madray as a welfare officer in London was able to help defuse ethnic tension there in the mid ’80s when I visited London while a student in Moscow. He was very popular among the West Indian communities especially in Brixton.
Burlin Shaheed peaked as bowler when Guyana was a top contender in the Shell Shield tournament, and the place for a leg spinner to partner Lance Gibbs was competed for by many including Rex Collymore and Sew Shivnarine. Shaheed and Shivnarine competed also for a permanent place in the Berbice cricket team in the Jones Cup Tournament.
However, Burlin Shaheed’s moment of glory was during the period he played for Port Mourant Cricket Club in the ’70s. In the Bristol final at Bourda in 1971, he mesmerized a strong Police Sport Club batting line-up with figures of 8-4-7-5; those five wickets included Pydanna, McRae, Harper and I think Ovid Glasgow, former Assistant Commissioner of Police. Police was routed for a paltry 103 in reply to Port Mourant’s 167, with Randolph Ramnarace hitting a brilliant 81.
One year later Port Mourant once again defeated Police in the Rothman’s final at Bourda. After finding themselves in early trouble at 66 for 6, Shaheed defied Police this time with the bat. He and wicket-keeper Mangal added a seventh wicket partnership of 60 to once again ensure a Port Mourant victory there by further entrenching Port Mourant as the undoubted champion and superpower of domestic cricket in Guyana.
Burlin Shaheed played his last match for Port Mourant in the late ’70s against Demerara Cricket Club at Bourda in the Rothman’s Final. Port Mourant won a nailbiting finish when Anand Sookram, a Caribbean table tennis champion, scored the winning run in the final delivery.
Burlin Shaheed like Ivan Madray worked as a welfare officer, employed by Bookers to upkeep the Port Mourant community centre.
The ground was a model with an ever green outlook. The centre also had a well run library in that period − a marked contrast to when that responsibility was passed to the local authority after the nationalization of the sugar industry. The local authority administration of the community centres led to the demise of cricket in the sugar estates everywhere in Guyana.
Reds Pereira, Shan Razack and Oscar Ramjeet who covered cricket extensively for the media during that period will remember the contributions of both Ivan Madray and Burlin Shaheed. This letter is a tribute to two of Guyana’s finest leg spinners, although unfortunately spinners did not really have a long shelf life in West Indies cricket, excepting for Lance Gibbs.
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Rampersaud
