By Curtis Morton
Recently, I made a commitment to seek out and interview all those individuals who have made significant contributions to sports on Nevis. These interviews will be conducted with, but not limited to all of those persons (still alive), who have represented Nevis at any sport at a national level; present and past administrators of the sports; and other individuals who have assisted in significant ways to make the various sports possible.
The basic reasons for such interviews at this time are threefold:
- To let the world know about the contributions of these individuals.
- People are dying at a fairly rapid rate. I must make contact with these people before they go -- and before I go.
- It is rumoured that earlier in the year when the Nevis cricket team was playing a match in St Kitts, somebody referred some of the Nevisian youngsters to Livingstone Sargeant and they indicated that they did not know who Livingstone Sargeant was! Now that is an affront if there ever was one.
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Curtis Morton has been a sports journalist on Nevis for two decades. He has been instrumental in initiating a female cricket league and sports awards
on Nevis. |
Therefore, the world will now know more about not only Livingstone Sargeant, but also about the majority of sporting heroes of Nevis.
I started my series of interviews with Irvin ‘Bonzo’ Walters. The gentleman has obviously aged since the last time I saw him and appears a little senile. Therefore I was unable to get his date of birth and other very important basic information.
However, as a youth growing up I remembered Bonzo as the number one grounds man on Nevis. He was known to be the ultimate master when there was a cricket pitch to be prepared. From cup matches, to Leeward Islands’ matches, to regional matches, Bonzo was the man who prepared the pitches. When the legendary Michael Holding came off that ominous long run from the pavilion end of Grove Park and cleaned bowled Luther Kelly (one of the finest opening batsmen that I have ever seen), with a ball that in my mind seemed invisible -- such was the speed -- Bonzo prepared that pitch. When Elquemedo Willet rocked Montserrat from a complacent position of 102 for 1 and bowled them out for 114, in a magical spell of 8 wickets for 2 runs, Bonzo prepared the pitch!
In the interview, Bonzo was quick to note that the way he prepared pitches, whatever the particular cricketer was prepared to put in, he would get out. He remembers playing cricket for the Boys School team and later played for Rivals, one of the leading clubs on Nevis. That is where he started his craft as a grounds man. Those days, there were no established grounds men. The cricketers had to prepare the pitches in preparation for their own matches and he learnt the craft and mastered it. He indicated that he started as a pace bowler but one day, having come off his long run, a batsman gave him a magnificent straight drive and he said that he was so aggrieved that he decided then and there that it was not worth it to be a pace bowler and eventually became a left arm orthodox spin bowler.
He felt that he would have represented Nevis in a big way had it not been for a falling out between himself and that champion of Nevis cricket and influential captain, John E. Howell. He said Howell referred to him as ‘rude”. It must be noted that Bonzo in his heyday at Grove Park was never at a loss for words and when he was really on a roll, many of those words would not qualify to print. He did, however, represent Nevis in one particular match versus some visiting sailors. He said that he was nervous and when he went down to bat, he was sent back lbw for nought!
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| Irvin ‘Bonzo’ Walters |
He later stopped playing the game and concentrated on preparing the pitch at Grove Park, until it became a full time job, compliments of the government of the day.
Laughing, Bonzo has fond memories of a particular match when Nevis was playing against St Kitts. Now those matches were always intense. Nevis according to him had set St Kitts a target of 171 or so. St Kitts had closed the penultimate day on 118 for 4. Bonzo said that one Kittitian supporter bet him that St Kitts would win the game on the final day. Bonzo said that he took the bet. “He musta forget that I was the grounds man,” he laughed. He said that that night when everyone else was asleep, he visited the pitch at Grove Park, measured out a good length for the batsman at one end of the pitch and seriously wet the spot. The umpires showed some concern with the spot the following morning but after some work by the same Bonzo they called play. Bonzo said that he told Nevis’s then fast bowling ace, Lipton ‘Big Bird’ Griffin: “Don’t drop the ball in the spot, ‘cause it will slow up; drop it just on the outside of the spot”. Apparently Big Bird and his colleagues rattled the Kittitians with their pace and fire on that day and Nevis won the match.
“Never bet against a grounds man!” Bonzo said, with a wide grin on his face. |
