This paper was completed by Gary Neil as part of the Bachelors Degree requirement in Caribbean History while he was an undergraduate at the University of the West Indies .
Gary attended KC from 1979-1986 and represented the school in cricket at all levels, U14, U16 and Sunlight Cup; and Jamaica at the Youth level (U19). His father, Gladstone Neil , and his younger brother, Roger , also represented KC in cricket. His father had the distinction of being captain of the school's first double winning team in 1962.
Gary represented Melbourne Cricket Club in Minor and Junior cup 1982-1984 and Senior Cup 1984-1987. He graduated UWI in 1996.
Chapter one was published in the January issue of the newsletter.
CHAPTER 2
1950-1975
I n the period 1950-1975, the significance and development of cricket within Kingston College experienced two distinct stages. Firstly, between 1950 and 1971, there was a consolidation of the significance, and careful attention to the development of cricket at Kingston College. After 1971, cricket began to experience many challenges which ultimately affected its role and development within the School. One of the manifestations of the first twenty-one years of the twenty-five year period under review, was the dominance of the 1950's as far as victories in inter-school competitions were concerned. Kingston College was victorious in the Sunlight Cup competition in 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954 and 1955. Thereafter, a relative drought in "cup" victory was experienced until 1962, when under the leadership of Gladstone Neill, Kingston College achieved supremacy in both the Sunlight and Spaulding Cup competitions. Concurrently, the School placed itself in the history books by becoming the first to win the Spaulding Cup outright. (The Sunlight Cup is the symbol of schoolboy cricket supremacy in urban Jamaica, the George Headley Cup for rural Jamaica, and the winners of each competed for the Spaulding Cup, thus symbolizing all-island schoolboy cricket supremacy). The Spaulding Cup was limited to a single day of play which resulted in the game typically ending in a draw. It was decided to play the game over a duration of two days, beginning in 1962, so as to encourage outright results, but low and behold, Kingston College defeated Clarendon College on the first day of that two day game.
For the remainder of the period, the School won the Sunlight Cup in 1964, 1970 and 1973, while also sharing the Spaulding Cup with Clarendon College, resulting from a rain ruined match in 1964, and winning outright in 1970. It is also interesting to note that during this period the School was represented by two students who were to later become West Indies Test cricketers. Firstly, the hard hitting batsman, Collie Smith, in the 1950's, and secondly, Michael Holding in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Having provided an outline of some of the cricket successes of the period, it may now be appropriate to examine some of the dynamics of the period under review.
By 1950, Kingston College had undoubtedly established itself as a force to be reckoned within the Jamaican educational sphere. As such, the numbers of students and staff grew steadily. The original quasi-familial structure of the School was maintained however, under the watchful, passionately caring, but disciplinarian eyes of Bishop P.W. Gibson up until 1956 when he retired. Bishop Gibson was succeeded by Mr. Douglas Forrest, who had been on staff since 1926, and who was, by all accounts, thoroughly tutored for the post by Bishop Gibson. It was to the benefit of the School that the smoothest of transitions occurred. Emanating from the leadership of the School was a continuum of the commitment to the inculcation of Christian values, of gentlemanly conduct, and of the general encouragement of the attainment of high achievement in all curricular activities pursued by the charges of the School.
Even more so than Bishop Gibson, Mr. Forrest was not only a believer in, but a practitioner of the ideals of "Muscular Christianity" which was referred to as being expounded by Sandiford in the first chapter. A man of considerable physical stature, Mr. Forrest was a sports enthusiast, and actually participated in sporting activity within the School; mainly in tennis. He was a passionate advocate of the inculcation of values through sport, and his recognition and encouragement of the participation of students in the "gentleman's game" of cricket, was testimony to this. The role of cricket in particular, and sport in general, was consolidated even further under Mr. Forrest, and as a result its development was duly encouraged.
In the 1950's and 1960's there was still a predominance of male teachers or masters as they were then termed, and the idea of their active involvement not only in the scholastic tutelage of the young men, but also in the supervision of sporting activity was retained under Mr. Forrest's tenure. Hence the involvement of Mr. James Crick, who administered cricket up to 1958, with the assistance of Mr. "Foggy" Burrowes. Burrowes was a past student of Kingston College, and was an avid sportsman up until he was stricken by polio, which necessitated a shift of his focus to teaching and sports administration. Mr. Crick was succeeded by yet another master, Mr. Sealy, upon his retirement. No discussion of the history, significance and development of cricket within Kingston College can be deemed credible without reference to the role played by Mr. Crick. Mr. Crick is a Barbadian who taught the discipline of Latin in addition to being the cricket master at Kingston College. He is said to have been a colossal role model in the lives of the vast majority of students who came into contact with him. His name and the influence he had on especially the cricketers, resonates throughout all the interviews of past Kingston College students who attended the School during the period under review. Mr. Gladstone Neill and Mr. James Richards during their interviews were unreserved in their praise of and tributes to Mr. Crick. He was said to be a staunch disciplinarian, committed to the inculcation of acceptable values and attitudes in his charges, and used the involvement in cricket as a major vehicle of such inculcation. As such, to represent the school was always deemed to be an honour demanding the smartest and whitest of flannels (cricket clothing). One's deportment had always to be perfect, one's attire always neat with white socks pulled over the calves and so on. Any departure from these standards was always quickly detected by Mr. Crick, who would in no uncertain terms bring it to the attention of the unfortunate and more often than not ridiculed offender, for the appropriate adjustments to be made. All this is recalled by the past students with great nostalgia, and is said to have positively affected their lives to this day. It was most heartening to hear Mabricio Ventura speak in glowing terms of Mr. Crick.16 Ventura is proclaimed by most local sports historians to be among the greatest schoolboy athletes of all time in Jamaica, if not the greatest. He excelled at all sports in which he participated in school. He is most revered for his exploits in track, football and cricket, but tells of looking forward most of all to the cricket season because of the discipline it required and instilled, but mainly because of the positive interaction with Mr. Crick. The past students referred to above, all bemoan the loss of that calibre of master within the present day school system in Jamaica. The appreciation of Mr. Crick's contribution seems well articulated by L. White who writes in his cricket report of 1958 in the School magazine of that year, " All that we have achieved in this field of sport can be attributed to Mr. Crick's unselfish devotion to his task."
The groundsmen at Kingston College during this era were also highly committed to the provision of good facilities for practice and for matches. Stories are told of the pride, personalities such Christie and Toddy, as they were affectionately known, took in the preparation of pitches, and how their wrath would be incurred if batsmen did not score well on the "batting" pitches prepared, or if bowlers failed to extract spin from a "spinning" wicket. These groundsmen were also said to be excellent handymen who would not hesitate to do good repair jobs on damaged equipment as a means of playing their part in the success of the School's athletes. This seems a far cry from the experience with groundsmen of later eras.
The organization of the game was undertaken by masters within the School who supervised Form and House competitions which served as "feeders" into the representative School teams. Forms would play among themselves for prizes, usually in the form of cakes. From Form competitions players would be recognized and drafted into their House teams. Each House had three teams of different age groupings which would compete among themselves. From the House competitions talent would show itself and be duly drafted into the School's representative teams. As a result of all this, there was active involvement in cricket throughout the School, and most students would have played some level of cricket while in school. The Form and House competitions also engendered loyalty to teams represented, which would be converted into support for those among these teams who made it to the representative level of School cricket. This resulted in an interest throughout the School in the fortunes of the teams representing them.
Although the organization of the game within the School was the responsibility of masters, as early as 1962, more past students began volunteering to assist with coaching of the School's cricket teams, such as Mickey Murdoch, undoubtedly influenced by the example of "Foggy" Burrowes before him. Roy McLean, who was later to become a stalwart in Kingston College's cricket development, assisted in 1965. In between these years and up until the late 1960's the cricket teams were supervised by Mr. Trevor Parchment. In 1969, Mabricio Ventura assisted with coaching alongside the Sportsmaster, Mr. Ivan "Wally" Johnson, himself another past student of the School. Beginning in 1971, Mr. James "Jimmy" Richards, a past student, took the post of coach of cricket, a post he held intermittently, due to other commitments, up until 1982. All these coaches had represented Kingston College at cricket while attending the School.
Beginning in the 1970's, problems which were to affect the significance and development of the game, began to surface in the organizational structure of cricket within Kingston College. Some of the factors contributing to this were: the decreasing levels of support and encouragement of the game from masters, the breakdown of Form and House cricket competitions because of a lack of personnel willing to supervise them, the apparent changing role of the Sportsmaster into concentrating on track and field and football mainly, and the resulting increasing dependence on past students to organize and supervise cricket preparation. All this, compounded by a lack of stability in the leadership of the School, coupled with the ever increasing numbers of students, played a role in the progressive marginalization of cricket within Kingston College.
With the departure of Douglas Forrest from the Principal's seat, the School was to experience a period of instability of leadership throughout the 1970's. In 1971, the Reverend Don Taylor replaced Mr. Forrest as Principal and remained for only three years before resigning and being replaced by another Anglican Priest, the Reverend John McNab in 1975. The arrival of Reverend Taylor signaled the first experience Kingston College was to have with an "outsider" at the helm. Reverend Taylor, though obviously steeped in the religious values of the Church was, unlike Mr. Forrest before him, new to the family of Kingston College, and so understandably took time to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of the Institution. The passion with which all aspects of the School's life was touched by the two former Headmasters was absent under Reverend Taylor. Cricket was no exception. In an atmosphere of ever increasing numbers within the School, relatively less resources to be allocated in an increasingly challenging socio-economic climate, cricket within the School progressively became a victim to all this. In fairness however, it should be recalled that Kingston College won the Sunlight Cup in 1973. To the yet acclimatized, this may have signaled that all was well with cricket, and that attention could properly be placed elsewhere. However if one was cognizant of the process, then the dangers of allowing the Form and House competitions to disappear would have been recognized as a mistake; the "feeder" system was being eliminated! It is also argued that the introduction of the shift system in the early 1970's hastened the demise of internal cricket competitions in the School. These competitions had been played mainly after regular school hours. With the advent of an evening shift it was deemed impractical to have the matches played in the mornings before the evening shift commenced, for those on that shift, and in the evenings for those on the morning shift. It is also argued that these matches would have presented distractions to classes in session, and that the length of the games made scheduling difficult. One definite fact is that with the introduction of the shift system, time became more so of the essence than ever before. With this reality, naturally, the games of longer duration would suffer most, and this was true of cricket.
Recognition must also be made of the factor of cricket's role as an agency of transference of British value systems to the Colonies coming under very real challenges. During the 1960's most Caribbean Colonies became independent Nations. The attractions and influences increasingly shifted from the "Mother Country" to the United States of America. This may have been an "accident of geography," as the Caribbean sits in the "belly" of the U.S.A. and across the Atlantic Ocean from Britain, but the reality resulted in an increasing attraction to North American cultural norms in sport, among other things. The action-packed, result oriented sports of relatively short duration in time became increasingly popular. With this type of challenge, and the relatively few opportunities provided by cricket to access further education, in comparison to the "dime-a-dozen" scholarships being offered by American Universities for achievements in football (soccer) and track and field, athletes found more satisfaction in pursuing those sports in the hope of accessing available scholarships, in the pursuit of self upliftment and realization, in an increasingly challenging socio-economic environment.
All these factors combined resulted in a decreasing number of students being actively involved in cricket within the School, and also somewhat of a marginalization of the significance of cricket and a retardation of its development being experienced by 1975 within Kingston College. It is interesting to note that after having won the Sunlight Cup in 1973, the report in the Kingston College school magazine of 1974 on that year's cricket season asserts that the ". unsuccessful attempt to retain the Sunlight Cup for cricket which they won so convincingly last year . was due to the fact that we had lost so many of our star players;" with no "feeder" system to show up potential replacements, " and also because players from last season who were expected to contribute a lot to the team this year . failed to do so . because of lack of training ." All this must not be interpreted as cricket "dying" within the School, as this was not the case. The point is that the pace of development of the game within the School became somewhat pedestrian.
Cricket is commonly referred to as being analogous to life, and this should be to the game's eternal credit, for the game, though marginalized within the School's priorities, managed to flourish in many aspects. Though the School was not again victorious in the Sunlight Cup competition until 1979, it was always, as Mr. Crick was known to say, "proxime accessit". In addition, the School was victorious in the Colts competition (for juniors) in 1974 and 1975. In 1975, two Kingston College students, Clifford Bell and Mark Neita represented Jamaica in cricket at the Benson and Hedges Under-19 West Indies Youth Tournament, Neita doing so at the tender age of thirteen years. Also of note in the 1970's is Michael Holding speaking with immense pride of leading the 1973 team to victory. He tells of being even " . more pleased with the way we played together as a team and by a comment by Baz Freckleton, a sports columnist with the Daily Gleaner newspaper, who wrote: `Throughout the season, the champions displayed an admirable blend of cricket skills, discipline, sportsmanship and sensitivity to good manners` ."17 When all was said and done, the ideals for which Gibson, Forrest, Crick, Burrowes et al strove, through Kingston College and cricket within the School, overcame all that could have been deemed negative and shone through brightly for all to see.
Michael Holding, one of the greatest, fastest, most skilled fast bowlers of all time, is undoubtedly a Jamaican, West Indian, and Global legend in cricket. However with the possible exception of his family and Melbourne Cricket Club, no one reveres him more than the Kingston College fraternity, and there is no doubt, given his frequent reminisces, that the feeling is mutual. Details of his career need not be given here as they are well documented elsewhere. What may be of interest to note is that Holding represented the Jamaica senior team in the regional Shell Shield competition with merit in 1973, while still in school, and was soon on his way to taking his place among the "greats" of Test cricket.
In summary, the era 1950-1975 proved bitter-sweet for the significance and development of cricket within Kingston College. Sweet-bitter probably more appropriately describes the era, for it was not until the 1970's that the "bitter" started to become evident, what with the retirement of Mr. Forrest, the dawning of the shift system, the fading of the Form and House competitions, the decreasing involvement of masters in the game and the fading of the Old Boys' match. As it is with life, so it is with cricket. Adversities are inevitable, and they present challenges to be overcome, the overcoming of which strengthens the whole process. The examination in the next chapter of the period 1975-1995 is sure to reveal the positive and negative effects of the experiences of the period just reviewed.
