Volume 1: The Foundation (Hansib Publications Limited, 2015) by Clem Seecharran A review by Winston Mc Gowan
This book is the first of a three-volume history of cricket in Guyana from 1865 to 1966. The author, Clem Seecharran, is a professional historian who currently is Emeritus Professor of History at London Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. The book is a special project of the Hand-in-Hand Fire Insurance Company, Guyana’s first indigenous insurance company, founded in 1865 in the wake of two fires which ravaged a significant part of Georgetown. Its publication, designed to mark the company’s 150th year in Guyana, coincides with the 150th anniversary of first-class cricket in Guyana and the English-speaking Caribbean, where the first such match was contested between Guyana (then British Guiana) and Barbados in Barbados in February 1865.
The book profits immensely from several circumstances, especially the fact that the author is a Guyanese, resident in the United Kingdom, an avid cricket fan, and a professional historian with the skills of data collection, analysis and evaluation who is knowledgeable of the history of Guyana. His residence in the UK enabled him to have access to early Guyanese newspapers in the British Library in London, sources which for the most part are inaccessible (through fragility) or non-existent in Guyana today. It also permitted him to consult early Barbadian and Trinidadian newspapers.
These circumstances have enabled Professor Seecharran to produce the first detailed account of the early development of cricket in Guyana.
