Meeting Gordon Greenidge

Ask any cricket pundit to select his West Indies dream team, of 11 players, from among the hundreds of players who have represented the national squad in “test” cricket over the last 150 years and it’s a sure bet that the name Gordon Greenridge will be very high on the list.
Very high because the selection of an 11 would begin with the two opening batsmen, and it’s almost universally agreed that Greenridge would merit one of those two slots based on his scores, and his consistency, as an opening batsman during his 1974-1991 “test” cricket career.
Highlights of that career are his 214 “not out” during the second “test” match at Lord’s, followed by his 223 in the fourth test at Old Trafford, in the summer of 1984.
The inning at Lord’s, the “home of cricket” in England, was particularly memorable. As teammate Viv Richards described it in the documentary, Fire in Babylon, Greenidge’s assault on the English bowling turned the game around. Richards viewed that turnaround as a “defining moment” in West Indies cricket, setting the foundation for the 5-0 rout of the English in what became known as the “blackwash” series.
His Lord’s feat is so huge that I couldn’t resist including it in a scene in Watkins At Bat, the first novel in my Sticky Wicket series.  Spoiler alert: In the scene, the fictional Watkins dreams of playing an inning comparable to Greenidge’s at Lord’s.
When I ran into Greenidge at the Radisson Hotel in Trinidad – where we both stayed while on the island for the fourth “test” match between the West Indies and India; he had flown in from England and I from the United States – I eagerly told him of my tribute to him.
“Do you happen to have a copy of the book?” was his just-as-eager response.
Funny he should ask.
I gave him a signed copy and the easy-going, very approachable Greenidge was gracious enough to autograph a second copy for me on the page with the reference to his 214 “not out” at Lord’s.
The cricket match we both flew thousands of miles to see was abandoned after a few hours’ play because of torrential rain, but my meeting with the West Indies “Hall of Famer” and our reminiscing about his Lord’s inning, and the glory days of West Indies cricket,  certainly made the trip worthwhile.

Cricket in Philadelphia – A Quick History

To Americans generally, cricket is a novelty sport with some resemblance to baseball. That resemblance isn’t by coincidence: the reality is that cricket is the granddaddy of American baseball — a game that reached its high point in Philadelphia in the mid-1800s when there were about 300 amateur clubs in the region, including at least a dozen high school teams.

The Philadelphia Cricket Club's wicket (pictured above) dates to the club’s founding in 1854. Photo courtesy of the C.C. Morris Cricket Library Association, the main sponsor of the Philadelphia International Cricket Festival, a four-day spring event featuring teams from around the world.

Interest in the sport began to wane around the turn of the century, as Philadelphians traded their horse-drawn carriages for automobiles and began driving to places like the Poconos, the Jersey Shore, or New England for their recreation, and switched to games like football and baseball with shorter duration — a couple of hours, versus an entire day.

The resurgence of cricket in America began in the 1970’s with the influx of immigrants from the former British Empire where it is the national sport. By the mid-1980s in Philadelphia, seven clubs had come together to form the Philadelphia Cricket League.

The seven modern-day pioneers were Echelon, RCA, Ardmore, Bimshire, International, University of Pennsylvania, and Haverford College where the game has been played almost continuously since shortly after the school's founding in 1833.

Merion Cricket Club, Philadelphia Cricket Club, and Germantown Cricket Club are among the survivors of that era, though they currently are better known for their lawn tennis and golfing facilities.

Today, the Philadelphia metropolitan region, which includes Delaware and South Jersey, boasts of being home to dozens of clubs in a host of leagues.

The Germantown Cricket Club, founded in 1854, is one of the venues for the annual Philadelphia International Cricket Festival. (Photo by Ewart Rouse. All rights reserved).