Cricket interest in Guyanese UK diaspora still strong

Dear Editor,

Following on from Neaz Subhan’s excellent letter in the SN on July 17th   `Guyana should have a cricket museum’, I can report huge interest in an event just  about Guyanese cricket on Friday July 15th at the Guyana High Commission in London.

A packed (and paying) audience spent well over seventy five minutes in an active question and answer session chaired by a true world expert on the game: Mihir Bose, the former sports editor of the BBC and author of The Spirit of the Game, a standard work on cricket. A small panel of Emeritus Professor Clem Seecharran, author most recently of the Hand in Hand History of cricket in Guyana and Colin Babb, author of They gave the crowd plenty fun answered as best they could.  Sometimes the discussion was very active, heated even, not unlike a licensed premises ‘back home’.

The evening was graced with the presence of Rex Collymore, the former Guyana and West Indies cricketer; High Commissioner to the UK Hamley Case; Riyad Insanally, the new Guyana Ambassador to Washington and Simon Lister, biographer of the great Clive Lloyd and author of the acclaimed Fire in Babylon.

This event showed that interest in the game in the UK diaspora is still strong, if waning amongst the second and third generations.

It also showed how the London High Commission could once again become the centre for matters Guyanese.

I produced it.

Yours faithfully,          

John ’Bill Cotton/Reform’ Mair