Dear Editor,
Four Guyanese cricketers are featured in this month’s Wisden Cricket Monthly’s cover article titled, “100 Hundreds that Changed the Game”. The centuries they chose were: at number 85 and number 86, Shiv Chanderpaul’s 105 and Ramnaresh Sarwan’s 104 in the same match, the fourth Test against Australia in May 2003; at number 34, Roy Fredericks’ 169 in the second Test against Australia in December 1975; and at number 2, Clive Lloyd’s 102 in the World Cup Finals against Australia in June 1975. There can be much reasonable disagreement and debate about many of the one hundred centuries chosen. They were cherry picked from centuries in all formats of the game, from the inception of available scorecards to today, and they include women’s matches too. Centuries by Deandra Dottin and three other women are among the players I recognized.
Four Guyanese cricketers coming from a nation of less a million inhabitants making such an outstanding list of players, from all time, in a cricketing universe of roughly two billion people is cause for national pride. Congratulations, Guyana.
Clive Lloyd’s 102 at number 2 in the 1975 World Cup Finals at Lords against Australia speaks for itself, especially for those of us who listened to the match.
Roy Fredericks’ 169 was a welcome bouyant relief for West Indian fans in that humiliating series against Lillee and Thompson in 1975 in Australia.
Sarwan and Shiv’s centuries in 2003 in the fourth Test against Australia enabled the West Indies to win a match in which they had to score 418 in the fourth innings, the highest successful chase in Test cricket. But did it also lead to a lowering of the tempo and vileness of sledging for which the Australian players were notorious? I don’t know if it is accurate but I believe that sledging has lessened significantly in the last decade or two. Or is that partially due to the fact that many of the Australian Test players are now heavily involved in the lucrative IPL, making sackfuls of rupees alongside team mates from other countries thus making them less inclined to vileness on the field? There are fifteen Test stature Australians in this year’s IPL.
At any rate congratulations to Clive, Shiv and Ramnaresh and a respectful bouquet to the memory of Roy. You made us proud.
Yours faithfully,
Tulsi Dyal Singh, MD.
