Heartly NeitaTHE MEN, women and children who lived in the village of my young years enjoyed one great passion. Cricket.
They either played cricket, watched it, white-washed the stones which formed the boundary, scored the runs by each batsman and the team on the display board, or picked the cashews for the women to make cashew punch for the visiting teams to enjoy.
They knew the finer points of the game which they learned over the years because the village hosted the best cricketers in Jamaica at the time. At least once per year, men such as George Headley, Ken Weekes, Hines Johnson, Ken Rickards, Neville Bonitto, Irving Iffla, Aston Powe, Laurie Fidee, Lee Carr, Allan Rae, John Prescod and others played at Glenroy. On the Saturdays and public holidays when matches were played at Glenroy, the cricket oval, the entire village spent the day sitting on the grass, shouting instructions to batsmen and bowlers. And they were usually right.
RUDIMENTS OF BATTING
My father loved cricket. He knew the rudiments of batting. Elbow high and a straight bat. He bowled a slow off break, but rarely took wickets. What he was good at was scoring and umpiring. The older folks revel in telling the story of the Four Paths spin bowler, Martin Waddell,, weaving the ball past George Headley's bat and hitting the pads plumb in front of the wicket.
"How's that!" Waddell shouted. My father ignored the appeal. As Waddell walked past my father, his face frozen with anger, my father said quietly.
"Look here Martin. Nobody came here to see you bowl. They came to see Headley bat."
This story reminds me of an article I found many, many years ago written by a porter, Isaiah Thomas of British Honduras (now Belize) who had this to say about umpires.
"Umpires," he wrote, "should be men of a chaste and wise character; upright, decent and respectable; and keen observers, and men of sedate nature, and with aptness and dexterity; consistency and stability.
In adjunct to these characteristics, if possible, to possess a cricketer's reputation of note, in touch with these idealisms, it is very essential and highly necessary for the umpires to be somewhat lettered; and particularly well acquainted, versed and skilled with the laws pertaining to cricket in order that they may conceive and realise the magnanimous, noble, and important parts of the game in which they have to perform; and to distinguish themselves circumspectly.
For with them rests the fate and doom of both clubs and cricketers. Above all things they should have impartial and generous sympathy; and also be free from all things that will encumber them in the obligation, deliberation, and discharge of their common duties and should uphold the honour, dignity, and principles of cricket, with irrespective regard to clubs, cricketers and sympathisers.
For in umpires, absolute power is invested which must be emphatically emphasised. The umpires are the sole judges of fair and unfair play whose decisions shall be final, in which consequently, no person or persons have got any right or privilege to challenge, evade, or revoke. In adverse to this affirmative declaration if achieved and accomplished, such style of unprincipled and reluctant form of depreciations tends to assume and usurp the order, power and prerogatives of the Umpires."
Mr. Thomas also gave his advice to ccaptains and cricketers, and at another time I will give you these views.
