Vin­ode Mam­chan

Queen's Park Crick­et Club has been likened to Lord's by crick­et man­ag­er at the club Jef­frey Guillen.

The for­mer Parkite open­er in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the club's an­nu­al prize giv­ing on the week­end gave a his­to­ry les­son and high­light­ed the im­por­tance of the Tra­garette Road es­tab­lish­ment to crick­et in the West In­dies.

Guillen said: "To the young QP crick­eters present, what you are now ben­e­fit­ing from at this great club did not come overnight, but through the ef­forts of many past mem­bers whose per­son­al sac­ri­fices, com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion have made this club sec­ond to none in the re­gion, and one that stands shoul­der to shoul­der with the best in the world. Names such as Sir Lind­say Grant, Sir Er­rol Dos San­tos, Botha Trench, Joe Agard, Jeff Stollmey­er , Ger­ry Gomez, in­clude their first names Mur­rays, Galts, Tre­strails, Davis', Carews and Ro­driguezes, just to name a few.

"For those who do not know, QPCC was the ar­chi­tect, the mover and shak­er and fi­nancier of T&T and West In­dies crick­et for the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry, un­til 1981, when QPCC re­lin­quished its to­tal con­trol and hand­ed over the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the TTCB.

"QPCC was what Lords is to Eng­land–the home of WI crick­et. And those who still up to to­day are en­vi­ous and un­just­ly crit­i­cal of this great club have not done their re­search, be­cause no praise can ever be high enough and no crit­i­cism should ever be lev­elled at a club that has con­tributed so much to the de­vel­op­ment of every as­pect of T&T and WI crick­et.

The Guillen fam­i­ly has been close­ly in­volved with Queen's Park now for 100 years and Jef­frey re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing of this: "To tell you some­thing about a more per­son­al his­to­ry: this year the Guillen fam­i­ly marks 100 years of un­in­ter­rupt­ed ser­vice and ded­i­ca­tion to this club. It start­ed for us in 1916 with my grand­fa­ther Vic­tor, an all-rounder who went on to play a cou­ple games for Trinidad, then be­came a Test um­pire–and be­came par­tic­u­lar­ly well known when he gave the Eng­lish­man Mau­rice Ley­land out LBW in 1935, on the sec­ond-to-last ball of the Test match, for WI to win. Ru­mour has it that he was lift­ed off the field by the spec­ta­tors and got a stand­ing ova­tion from the mem­bers in the pavil­ion. When asked by one of the Eng­lish play­ers how he gave the bats­man out, Vic­tor replied, "By rais­ing my right in­dex fin­ger."

"Three of his sons fol­lowed him in­to Queen's Park: Simp­son, my fa­ther, Noel, and Court­ney. Court­ney's claim to fame is that he was the first QP crick­eter to make a 100 on the new­ly laid turf wick­et, the pre­vi­ous wick­et hav­ing been mat­ting. Simp­son, the el­dest and most fa­mous of the three broth­ers, was a larg­er-than-life char­ac­ter, a bril­liant wick­et­keep­er/bats­man who toured Aus­tralia and NZ in 1951-52 with the fa­mous 3 Ws–Weekes, Wor­rell and Wal­cott. He kept wick­et to Ra­mad­hin and Valen­tine, and played against the great Lind­wall and Miller. But then, on the faint promise of a job, in 1952, in less than a cou­ple hours, he said good­bye to his fam­i­ly, with his mom in tears, jumped on an oil tanker and head­ed to New Zealand with the hope of mak­ing a bet­ter life for him­self. He went on to play Test crick­et for NZ and re­mains the on­ly West In­di­an to have played Test crick­et for two coun­tries. I could go on and on about Simp­son, but time does not per­mit.

"As fa­mous as Simp­son was, my fa­ther Noel's con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et at this club will re­main in the an­nals of his­to­ry for gen­er­a­tions to come. An open­ing bats­man who al­so played for Trinidad, self­less­ly and with his own re­sources, and with a nat­ur­al knack for coach­ing, he start­ed the Sun­day-morn­ing coach­ing school in 19.

"Noel passed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the school and by ex­ten­sion the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et at the club in­to the trust­ed hands of Bryan Davis, who, with the sup­port of this club and his son Gre­go­ry, Charles and David, along with oth­er coach­es, has con­tin­ued with great suc­cess to en­sure that QPCC re­mains the well­spring of Trinidad and To­ba­go and WI crick­et."

WICB to work along­side CCUSA

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) will work close­ly with Crick­et Coun­cil USA (CCUSA) to pop­u­larise the sport in the Unit­ed States. This is the word from pres­i­dent of the board, Dave Cameron.

Re­cent­ly Cameron vis­it­ed the US and took in the US OpenT20 crick­et tour­na­ment that was played over four days in Fort Laud­erdale. Af­ter ob­serv­ing the crick­et he said :"I am hap­py with the over­all or­gan­i­sa­tion of this tour­na­ment by Crick­et Coun­cil USA. They have showed that they are a pro­fes­sion­al bunch and is ca­pa­ble of hav­ing prop­er­ly or­gan­ised crick­et here in the Unit­ed States.

"The WICB has a cer­tain amount of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when it comes to as­sist­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of the game in the US and we are will­ing and ready to work with CCUSA to take the game for­ward. We all know of the ma­jor ben­e­fits to the sport, if it takes off here and we are all on­ly too hap­py to do our part to make this hap­pen.

"One thing I no­ticed was the fact that the crowd was not that great for the tour­na­ment but this is some­thing I would like to as­sist with. We at the WICB have a da­ta base that we can share with the CCUSA so that they can use to get peo­ple through the gates for the games.

"In ad­di­tion to this we will con­tin­ue to work with the oth­er full mem­ber boards, to stage crick­et in the US, so that it can cap­ture the young peo­ple and this is crit­i­cal for the growth of the sport here."

Cameron met with chair­man of the CCUSA Ma­ham­mad Qureshi and vice-chair­man Mo­hammed Amin Marka­tia dur­ing the tour­na­ment and was able to share valu­able in­for­ma­tion with them in terms of grow­ing the sport in the US.

Lara turns back the clock

Some vin­tage bats­man­ship and bel­liger­ent hit­ting ruled the hearts of the crick­et fans in a Big Bash League ex­hi­bi­tion match at the West­ern Aus­tralia Fes­ti­val of Crick­et in Perth.

For­mer crick­et­ing greats such as Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Bri­an Lara and An­drew Symonds turned back the clock in an ex­hi­bi­tion game be­tween Leg­ends XI and Perth Scorchers at Aquinas Col­lege in front of the packed sta­di­um with en­thu­si­as­tic fans.

For­mer Aus­tralia wick­et-keep­er Adam Gilchrist opened the bat­ting for the Leg­ends XI side along­side Ryan Camp­bell against the strong Big Bash fran­chise. How­ev­er, Gilly went back to the pavil­ion af­ter adding just two runs fol­low­ing a con­tro­ver­sial catch by Ian Bell.

Camp­bell, who fea­tured in the ICC World T20 ear­li­er this year went on to score cru­cial 46 for his side.

But, the re­al feast came in the form of Ricky Ponting and Bri­an Lara who put on a vin­tage dis­play at the crease. Ex-skip­per Ponting took the lead and played some ex­tra­or­di­nary shots which en­thralled the crowd. Ponting went on to notch up a bril­liant half cen­tu­ry off just 38 balls, be­fore falling to an off-spin­ner by all-rounder Mitchell Marsh.

Where­as, Lara who had struck a cou­ple of half-cen­turies in each of the past two Fes­ti­val of Crick­et match­es al­so showed glimpses of his glo­ri­ous past.

The Trinida­di­an bats­man scored 33 for his side and struck three fours and a six in the glo­ri­ous Perth sun­shine.