?Hugh Hen­der­son

Jan­u­ary 12, 2010 was the date of the trag­ic Haiti earth­quake which we will al­ways re­mem­ber with sad­ness but Jan­u­ary 12 each year is al­so a very hap­py mem­o­ry in my per­son­al sport­ing life as on that day in 1970, 16-year-old Lar­ry An­ge­lo Gomes blazed his way to in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et promi­nence when he scored a mas­sive 152 not out at the Oval against the Aus­tralian school­boys which team in­clud­ed fu­ture Test play­ers like Gary Gilmour.

Three years be­fore at the first screen­ing of young tal­ent by Wes Hall on con­tract to WIT­CO, I had seen a pen­cil - slim 13-year-old bats­man - name un­known - bat for the manda­to­ry three min­utes in the nets and told Wes : "I don't care where else we look, we will nev­er find a bet­ter play­er." On my clip­board I wrote: "left-han­der-beau­ti­ful to watch" and af­ter the ses­sion asked his name.

At the end of a four-month na­tion­wide tal­ent search, Wes de­cid­ed that Richard Gabriel was a bet­ter bats­man than Lar­ry Gomes "by a nose!"I can "see" Lar­ry now as he walked back to the pavil­ion to the ap­plause of the Aus­tralians and the crowd, cap - less as al­ways, shirt but­toned at the wrists and wear­ing a white sleeve­less sweater my aunt had knit­ted for me when I was a teenag­er, and which is still in per­fect con­di­tion.

Lar­ry thought he "looked sharp" in the sweater and in­sist­ed on wear­ing it even though it was a boil­ing hot day! As he walked up the pavil­ion steps with bat raised to ac­knowl­edge the ap­plause, I re­flect­ed on how amaz­ing life can be, giv­en the sto­ry of the pre­vi­ous three years.

The 152 was not just a mat­ter of runs but rather the qual­i­ty of the 22 strokes that pep­pered the bound­ary – glo­ri­ous, thrilling strokes robed in gold which ca­ressed the Oval grass as the Aussies were left stand­ing. Twen­ty of the 22 bound­aries were his patent­ed cov­er dri­ves – no more beau­ti­ful stroke ex­ist­ed in youth crick­et – the main rea­son why Jeff Stollmey­er, him­self a famed styl­ist, dubbed Lar­ry "young Sobers".

At lunch, Lar­ry was 97 not out and I told him I was not pre­pared to con­grat­u­late him un­til he got to 150 which he ob­vi­ous­ly did not ap­pre­ci­ate as his "you are nev­er sat­is­fied" in­di­cat­ed! I al­so men­tioned that his Dad who sel­dom saw him bat, was sit­ting in the school­boys stand, and soon af­ter the in­ter­val, Lar­ry turned a ball to fine-leg in his Dad's di­rec­tion to com­plete his hun­dred.

As I did for all Lar­ry's youth in­nings over the years no mat­ter where he played, I chart­ed this in­nings and had it pro­fes­sion­al­ly pro­duced with the bound­aries in red and oth­er runs in blue and for years it hung proud­ly in the liv­ing room of his par­ents' home in Loubon Street, Ari­ma.

At the end of the match, I was tak­en aback when Joey Carew made the point that while Lar­ry's strokes were in­deed scin­til­lat­ing, his in­nings was "not a great one" be­cause it was too one-sided in terms of where he scored his runs. Lat­er, when I stud­ied the wag­on-wheel, I re­al­ized that Joey was right and took cor­rec­tive ac­tion to en­sure Lar­ry im­proved his reper­toire of leg-side shots.

In the Ari­ma nets, I paid will­ing vol­un­teers 25 cents to bowl or pelt to Lar­ry with in­struc­tions for him "to hit the ball to leg no mat­ter where it pitch­es." This may well have been the first step to his be­com­ing "Mr.De­pend­able" with push­es and prods on the leg side, but that's an­oth­er sto­ry!

In Au­gust 1969, BWIA spon­sored an un­der - 19 tour to Bar­ba­dos for which team Lar­ry and left arm spin­ner "Cocky" Collins were the last two se­lec­tions. In the first game, Lar­ry scored two "ducks" in one day and I watched him wash away his tears in the dress­ing room. That evening I sat with him un­der an al­mond tree and wrote down 16 crick­et goals which in­clud­ed a suc­cess­ful Test ca­reer say­ing: "for­get to­day. I just know you will be a Test crick­eter soon. You use your tal­ent to the full and I will keep you on track."

That may have been mad­ness at the time but de­spite a few rocky times over the years, all but two goals were even­tu­al­ly ful­filled and I still have those 16 goals in my files. One un­ful­filled goal was that Lar­ry nev­er cap­tained West In­dies in a Test match, though he did cap­tain the WI tour­ing team against Vic­to­ria in Aus­tralia.

The oth­er was that when he re­tired he had not scored more first class runs than any oth­er Trinida­di­an – Deryck Mur­ray scored a few more but with many more in­nings un­der his belt.

Then in De­cem­ber that year, there was an­oth­er BWIA tour to Ja­maica for un­der-17s which I man­aged with Wes Hall as coach by which time we knew the Aus­tralian school­boys were com­ing in Jan­u­ary and that the first West In­dies Youth team would tour UK in Ju­ly 1970.

The team for UK would be se­lect­ed on the ba­sis of the Ben­son and Hedges Youth tour­na­ment to be held in Guyana in April and I stressed to all the guys how im­por­tant this Ja­maica tour was in the con­text of the next sev­en months. Specif­i­cal­ly, I told Lar­ry that he had (a) to bat well in Ja­maica; (b) score "big" against the Aussies and (c) be a "star" in Guyana – a tough tri­fec­ta to ac­com­plish!

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, for the two months be­fore the Ja­maica tour, Lar­ry was con­stant­ly sick and of­ten missed prac­tice at King George V Park. He ar­rived in Ja­maica frail and weak and in the first game, field­ed so bad­ly, he was ac­tu­al­ly booed by the crowd.

How­ev­er he man­aged to score 55 against Uton Dowe and com­pa­ny in­clud­ing three clas­sic cov­er dri­ves in one over. Skip­per Dud­nath Ram­keesoon al­so scored 50 plus, and I re­mem­ber wick­et keep­er Ran­dall Ly­on hav­ing to open the bat­ting in the sec­ond in­nings but I can't think why! Nicholas Mout­tet, broth­er of Ger­vais Mout­tet, own­er of cham­pi­on race­horse "Bruceon­th­eloose" was a very use­ful all-rounder on that team, along with Sar­ran Coon­ai, Joe Maraj, and Nir­mal Nanan.

The team re­turned home in ear­ly Jan­u­ary 1970 to pre­pare for the young Aus­tralians, and apart from Lar­ry's mar­velous in­nings, he man­aged to dam­age his throw­ing arm while field­ing, which meant an ur­gent vis­it to the famed sur­geon, Sir Hen­ry Pierre. In­ci­den­tal­ly, Lar­ry and La­dy Mar­jorie Pierre share the same birth­date -Ju­ly 13- which made it eas­i­er to sched­ule ap­point­ments! I am not sure how many fans are aware that the arm nev­er healed prop­er­ly and Lar­ry played his en­tire Test ca­reer with a weak throw – he was not the au­thor of many run outs!

The T&T team played very well in Guyana, and five mem­bers were se­lect­ed for the UK tour – Dud­nath Ram­keesoon (cap­tain), Nir­mal Nanan, Boya Sa­hadeo, Richard Gabriel and Lar­ry Gomes. The Fa­ti­ma Col­lege wick­et­keep­er Mick­ey Re­ece should have been an au­to­mat­ic choice, but pol­i­tics reared its ug­ly head once more, and the Ja­maican Morde­cai was se­lect­ed in­stead. As a re­sult of their in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances in UK, Nanan and Sa­hadeo land­ed con­tracts with Not­ting­hamshire, Lar­ry with Mid­dle­sex, and Dud­nath and "Ga­bie" spent a sum­mer with Sus­sex 2nd X1 along with Shel­don Gomes, Ran­dall Ly­on and Kei­th d'Heureux cour­tesy of WIT­CO Sports Foun­da­tion. The year af­ter, Chris Galt and Raph­ick Ju­madeen went to Sus­sex.

Those were in­deed "sun­ny" days in youth crick­et in which I was priv­i­leged to play a role and a painful­ly shy, in­tro­vert­ed teenag­er from Ari­ma went on to pro­vide me with won­der­ful crick­et and per­son­al mem­o­ries which con­tin­ue to this day. Would you be­lieve that in five months time, if all goes well, that same teenag­er will be­come a grand­fa­ther? Time and tide wait for no man!