Excellent recollection of 1983, a watershed year for Guyana’s cricket

I wish to congratulate your newspapers for allowing the space to cover the reunion event and to publish score cards and results of this momentous year, 1983, and Mr. Roger Seymour, my former school colleague, for an excellent job as usual in interviewing speedster Leslaine Lambert and putting together a fine recollection of this watershed year when Guyana won both titles. I sincerely hope that the recall of these events will serve as a motivation for our young cricketers to try and reclaim such glory.

I have had the experience at representing Queen’s College at both Under-16 and Wight Cup levels and playing alongside both Roger Harper and Garfield Charles in those teams. The public may be interested to know that Garfield (Looby) Charles then played as a specialist batsman and did some occasional bowling so it is quite amazing that he was able to reinvent himself, so to speak, where he became an opening bowler not with express speed but relying more on swing and consistent line and length. While Garfield played as a specialist batsman for QC, his older brother Roger played as a fast bowler for the school side.

Through your medium, I pose a question as to whether

Roger Harper and Garfield Charles are the last two QC boys to have represented Guyana’s national cricket side? For the benefit of the reading public, those who watched First Class cricket at the time, will recall the high quality of cricket played at the Case Cup Division One Level. If my memory serves me right, Charles played for GCC, Harper - DCC, Butts – Everest, White –DCC (allrounder), Kallicharran - Everest, Bacchus - GCC, Lloyd – DCC, Fredericks – DCC, Lyght – DCC, Pydanna – Police and Lambert – GDF.

I would like Mr. Seymour or knowledgeable readers to confirm which Berbice team Kamal Singh and Tyrone Etwaroo played for and which local team Monty Lynch played for or was part of, if any? Readers should know that competition rules at the time allowed, under special conditions, players to represent more than one cricket club in a given year. As an aside, while 1983 was a spectacularly successful year for Guyana, this was not the case for the West Indies side which lost the World Cup finals to India at Lords in England and many believed this was the beginning of a slide and then their plummet to near bottom in Test and One Day cricket.