Former Barbados and West Indies fast-bowler Anderson Cummins played a vital role in YMPC’s successful 1988 season.
By Keith Holder
A big welcome back to Young Men’s Progressive Club (YMPC)!
For the first time since they were demoted after the 2011 season, Bayview Hospital YMPC have returned to the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) Elite division Championship, which started last Saturday.
The promotion and relegation system was introduced in 2009 and three years later the old First division was rebranded as Elite with ten teams.
YMPC’s return to the top division follows their capture of the First division Championship in 2019. There were no ‘league’ competitions in 2020 and 2021 because of the Covid pandemic.
Founded in 1934, the Beckles Road club won their first major title in 1988. They shared the 1991 Championship with Empire and won one more title in 2006.
This column features the 1988 season, which will long be remembered as arguably the wettest since the turn of the 1980s.
In a rain-hit last round against Spartan at Queen’s Park, chasing 82 to win, YMPC dramatically triumphed by one wicket in rapidly fading light.
Rain affected the season to such an extent that there were only 11 outright victories, and as many as 13 no results.
Of those wins, YMPC, under a new captain in batsman Stephen Lorde – he replaced left-arm spinner Winston Reid after a wretched 1987 season in which YMPC lost five matches and finished second last – had three and second-placed and dethroned champions Police, two.
And YMPC’s 36 points – three more than Police – were the least for a team lifting the Championship in the decade.
Police, led for the first time by all-rounder Dave “Chief” Cumberbatch, a left-arm spinner and right-hand batsman (Cumberbatch was a former Barbados Youth team captain and West Indies Under-19 team player, who also played at the first-class level for Barbados), were the only team to register a win in the opening round, soundly beating Maple by nine wickets at Weymouth.
Pickwick briefly took over the lead after Series 3 when they defeated Spartan by 56 runs at Kensington Oval before Police returned to the top, jointly with four other teams – Pickwick, YMPC, BCL and Carlton – on 13 points at the end of the fourth round.
Then Police led alone from Series 5 right down to the penultimate round when the Points table showed five teams with a chance of silverware – Police 30, YMPC 28, Empire 27, Maple 24 and St. Catherine 23.
Therefore in the final round, the matches which mattered were: Police v Empire at Weymouth, Spartan v YMPC at Queen’s Park and Maple v St. Catherine at Trents.
Rain again played a telling part and there was only one outright result.
At Queen’s Park, there was no play on the first day and after losing the toss on Day 2, Spartan, batting with two players short in Wayne Alleyne and Donovan Lovell, were fired out for 40 off 16.4 overs on a slow pitch and a heavily-grassed, wet outfield.
The only batsman to reach double-figures was Ezra Moseley with 27 at No. 6.
Moseley was one of four players in the Spartan team at the time with first-class experience – the others were Franklyn Stephenson, Henderson Springer and captain George Linton. Two others in the side – Livingstone Puckerin made his first-class debut the next year and Ottis Gibson followed a couple seasons later.
YMPC used three bowlers in the first innings – all pacers. Improving all-rounder, Anderson Cummins, who batted as high as No. 3 for most of the season, took three for nine, Charles “Max Walker” Alleyne, three for 25 and Wendell Coppin, two for four.
With time of essence, YMPC then scored 49 for three declared off 18.1 overs.
Cummins, used as an opener, made 33 before he was run out, having added 42 for the first wicket with Roy Coppin (12).
Off-spinner Springer took two for three off two overs.
By the close of play, Spartan were reeling on 25 for five off 19.4 overs in the second innings – just 16 runs ahead.
They lost two early wickets on the final day and were 35 for seven before Moseley and Springer added 32. The partnership was broken by Cummins, who had Moseley leg before wicket, co-incidentally, again for the top-score of 27.
Spartan rallied to 90 all out off as many as 60 overs, their effort helped by a last wicket stand of 23 between Springer (14 not out) and Lovell (13).
Wendell Coppin took three for 12 off 14 overs, Cummins, three for 28 off 13 overs and Reid, three for 32 off 24 overs.
In their victory chase, YMPC lost their first two wickets with only seven runs on the board. They were revived by Cummins, again as an opener, and left-hander Peter Sealy, who put on 43 for the third wicket before a collapse set in.
At 77 for nine, everyone was on edge when No. 9 William Bourne, a former first-class pacer for Barbados and Warwickshire in the English County Championship, was joined by Alleyne.
Following a couple blunders in the field, YMPC squeezed home in 25.1 overs with a bye off the first ball of the very last over of the match from fast bowler Moseley to spark wild celebrations.
Mark Estwick, then the YMPC vice-captain and wicket-keeper, described the drama which unfolded.
“It was not easy. We were up against a star-studded Spartan team including the likes of Franklyn Stephenson, Ezra Moseley, George Linton, Henderson Springer, Ottis Gibson, Livingstone Puckerin, Feliston Gilkes, Roy Alleyne and Ronnie Griffith,” Estwick said.
“In our victory chase of 82 in roughly 25 overs including the mandatory 15 overs in the last hour, we collapsed from 50 for two to 77 for nine as panic set in. Needing five from the second last over bowled by Stephenson, the first ball was played by “Max Walker” straight back up the pitch. Inexplicably, the batsmen ran through for an improbable single. Stephenson swiftly gathered the ball and threw at the striker’s end, but missed the stumps with William Bourne still in mid-pitch,” Estwick recalled.
“The next four balls were dots as Bourne swung mightily without connecting. Then with the light rapidly fading, Bourne managed to connect a drive limply off the bottom of the bat to deep cover where it managed somehow to slip through the legs of Ronnie Griffith and into the boundary. A bye was then scampered off the first ball from Moseley.
“It was an absolutely amazing and emotional moment for us. We partied the entire night after leaving Queen’s Park around 10 o’ clock.”
Left-hander Thelston Payne, the St. Catherine stalwart, who played in the maximum 11 matches, amassed the most runs (610) from 15 innings including three not outs, and also boasted of the best average (50.83).
Payne and the Pickwick off-spinning all-rounder Joseph Harris, each hit two centuries of 15 all told.
Payne slammed a career-best 203 not out against Banks at Bayfield in the fourth round and an unbeaten 154 off Police at Weymouth in Series 2, while India-born Harris made 107 v YMPC at Kensington Oval (Series 1) and 132 v Police at Weymouth (Series 4).
The Empire pair of Roland Holder (556; ave: 46.33) and skipper Carlisle Best (535; ave: 38.21) were the only other batsmen to score over 500 runs.
Emmerson Jordan, the Maple captain and fast bowler, was the sole bowler to take 50 wickets (ave: 10.68).
And there was a uniqueness about Jordan’s performance in that he was the only bowler as well to send down more than 200 overs (201.4), the most maidens (47), while conceding the most runs (534).
Jordan had a best haul of seven for 33 in the first innings against Carlton at Black Rock (now Desmond Haynes Oval) in the 10th round – match figures of 10 for 74 – in a 26-run win.
To boot, he had the honour of grabbing a hat-trick in figures of five for 12 against St. Catherine.
His performance, at the age of 29, led to a first-class debut the following year.
Anderson Cummins took the second most wickets – 45 – at 10.33 runs each.
Emmerson King of Empire was the top wicket-keeper with 30 victims (26 catches and four stumpings), while Pickwick’s Clinton St. Hill showed his consistently high standard in the field by taking the most catches (16).
Significantly eight of 17 players who represented YMPC that season, resided within a couple miles of each other in the southern parish of Christ Church. They were: Wendell Coppin (Lead Vale), his cousin Roy Coppin and David Holder (Waldron Village), Anderson Cummins (Packers) (he is another cousin of Wendell Coppin), Peter Sealy (St. Patrick’s), Malcolm Powlett (Fairview), DeCoursey Eversley (Charnocks) and Alwin Callender (Pilgrim Place ‘B’).
YMPC team (with matches in brackets) – Stephen Lorde (captain, 9), Anderson Cummins, Roy Coppin, Peter Sealy, Mark Estwick, Winston Reid, Charles Alleyne (11), David Holder (9), Jeffrey Butcher (8), Malcolm Powlett (6), Keith Seale (5), William Bourne, Andrew Ince (4), DeCoursey Eversley, Wendell Coppin, Alwin Callender (3), Cliff Cudjoe (2).
FINAL POINTS – YMPC 36, Police 33, Empire 28, Maple 27, St. Catherine 24, BCL 24, Wanderers 23, Carlton 21, Pickwick 21, Spartan 19, Banks 17, Combined Schools 13.
Keith Holder is a veteran, award-winning freelance sports journalist, who has been covering local, regional and International cricket since 1980 as a writer and commentator. He has compiled statistics on the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) Division 1 (rebranded Elite in 2012) Championship for four decades and provides statistics and stories for the BCA website (www.barbadoscricket.org). Email: Keithfholder@gmail.com
