I am a northerner by birth and education. From Paynes Bay to Pie Corner, this Speightstown boy sees as home. Cricket is my sport of choice as player, spectator and administrator. Now, when I see the struggles of that game in the north I am hurt.
Yes, the clubs in the Barbados Cricket League have kept the flag flying but Checker Hall is gone, Bristol is in the hospital on life support and North Stars, though outstanding as a community institution, shows frills in its cricket programme.
Today, I accept a duty to promote the Maple Club as our standard bearer that has carved out a rich history and continues to allow us to keep our heads held high. Many of our legacy builders have gone on but the dream they helped to fashion lives on. Thanks to the players, administrators and supporters, soaring upward will not end any time soon.
Maple Cricket Club emerged during the 1950s when cricket for Barbadians was a very popular sport and was part of everyday village life. This was a time when young men especially, with too much leisure time and no constructive activity in which they could participate, could easily find themselves battling with the law.
It was out of this situation that the priest of the Holetown Methodist Church, Reverend Kenneth Swanton, recognised the need for some form of social activity in the area and the Maple Club resulted.
Recognising the need for mature and responsible leadership for the club (a need often missed in local clubs today), police Captain Eustace Simmons, who was at the time responsible for the Northern parishes, and to whom the youth in Holetown looked up for guidance, was invited to lead the committee as president. West Indies cricketer George Carew was selected as vice-president and Dacosta Denny as secretary.
Ronald Tree, a millionaire living in the community at Heron Bay, recognising that there was no outlet for the young men, bought the four acres of Trents Plantation and donated it to the people of Holetown, “in perpetuity”, to be kept as a playing field. This gesture was a deterrent to the roadside gambling involving the youth that he had seen in other parts of Barbados. This became and has remained the club’s home.
Maple was mainly a self-help club with its members raising funds to buy cricket gear by keeping dances in the community centre on Saturday nights. They also did most of the work in constructing their first clubhouse.
George Carew set out the cricket field and planted the mahogany trees which adorn the eastern end of the club house so that spectators would be protected from the sun. They prepared excellent pitches, beginning at dawn every Saturday morning.
Maple Club applied to the Barbados Cricket Association for permission to enter a team in the Second Division of its cricket competitions, with Trent’s playing field as its base. The application was favourably received and Maple Club was entered for its first series of cricket games in the Second Division competition in 1959.
Luther Francis was the first captain. The team won the championship, playing without a single defeat in its first season.
The following year 1960, Maple was allowed to field teams in both the Intermediate and Second Division of the competition. In 1961, Maple won both the Intermediate and Second Division trophies. Club members believed that with such outstanding achievement promotion to First Division would have been automatic, but that was not to be. In 1963, the thrust was to regain the championship and by sheer determination Maple once again won the Intermediate Division. Maple competed against Empire Club in the “final” for the championship and defeated the great club from St Michael.
The life of the club has been sustained by its excellent players such as Luther Francis, Keith Boyce, Wycliffe and Neil Phillips, John Shepherd, Erskine King, Chetwyn Burnham, Kemar Roach, Wayne Gibbons, Glenroy Sealy, Hartley Doyle and a plethora of others.
These were well supported by excellent administrators such as Wayne Harris, Barrington Yearwood, Suel Mayers and Ossy Marshall and the most loyal, critical and vocal of supporters such as Arlington “Cy” Nurse and Elaine Lynch, who would forgo cooking at home to ensure her Maplelites were well nourished. Keep the flag flying, Maple!
Jeff Broomes is an experienced educator, principal and community organiser who also served as a vice president of the BCA and director of the WICB. Email: [email protected]
