Dear Editor,
One reason I heartily support Ian McDonald’s plea for the preservation of the Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) at Bourda as an historical sports, and specifically cricket, site is that it must remain to commemorate not only the history of the game which started to integrate the colonial territories of the West Indies, but also that it has been the nostalgic locus of all the great cricket played by the West Indies and West Indians in this country.
Bourda, ranked in its time as producing one of the best pitches of Test playing grounds, has been graced by players whose exploits resonate throughout cricketing history: Headley, Holding; Worrell, Weekes, Walcott; Richards, Richardson; Christiani, Kanhai, Lloyd, Gibbs, Fredericks, Butcher and Solomon – just to name a few, and not to mention the numerous contingents of the international greats from England, Australia, India and Pakistan.
At Bourda, we saw the West Indies at their best. We saw the first Test innings of a current great – Shivnarine Chanderpaul – whose name is now enshrined as its western ‘boundary.’
Fortunately, Bourda escaped the ravages of Twenty/Twenty cricket. Indeed it has hardly been linked to the current depression in West Indies cricket. Its edifice remains a monument to a once noble game, immune from the trappings of safety gear; the acclamation of meagre scores off umpteen balls; and the technological directions to umpires’ decisions.
At its best times it reflected a society conscious of its centre – proud of its sense of an integrated cultural identity – attributes we need desperately to recapture.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
