Brockton Point Cricket Club - 1975 - 2000

By Chris Van Twest.


George Nugent, Wally Tait, Rodan and Karam Gopaulsingh were the cricket clubs mainstays when I arrived back on the scene in 1975, having played one season in 1967 and been absent due to studies for the remainder of the time in between.

1976 was a non-event year. I didn't play because of my articling commitments. Brockton was getting long in the tooth and was relegated to the 2nd division. In 1977 I rejoined the club with a West Indian from Caribe Cricket Club named Steven Deare and the club ripped Seattle in the closing game to gain promotion back into the 1st division.

1978 to 1980 we won the 1st division championship with a new "young" side, Deare, Mahabir, Stead, Van Twest, Arjune, ably assisted by the old guard, Karam and Rodan Gopaulsingh and a very young Ian Tait. However, the Western Canadian club championship fixture played in Winnipeg, Manitoba taught me that we were still carrying dead weight. A bunch of kids 1 and 2'd us to death on a fast track at Assinaboine Park and we retreated to the pub to take stock.

The club inventory was down to nothing for 1981. Stead had retreated back into flying. Deare had left the team for the greener pastures of Vancouver. Rodan and Karam had stopped playing. We cobbled together a side. F. Dharamsi, our opener, along with Prakash Chatralia, who could only bowl a googly, Ali Shivji, 5 to 7 overs of swing bowling, A. Dickinson, couple 4 - 5 overs steady and straight, Uraj, 10 overs every game straight, stump to stump, nothing fancy; Arjune to kill any spin while batting, Mahabir to rack it up from the left side and managed in the end to finish a respectable middle of the pack. The truth be said this was probably the grittiest Brockton side in my 25 plus years of playing cricket in Vancouver 1st division. 1982 horror of horrors, I had a car accident, Graham Mahabir captained the side, Chris Tynan scored over 300 runs, none the less Brockton finished bottom of the table, but we were not relegated. 1983 I was still recovering but played some and captained. 1984 we had an influx of talent from UBC; Paul Griffin, Trevor Hart, Peter MacDonald to name but a few and we went on a roll. 1984-1990 if you didn't play for Brockton you didn't play cricket. David White, Chris Tynan, Barry Seebaren, Steven Deare, Martin Stead, Ian Tait, Benji Arjune, Ariye Herath, Vas Gunaratna, the Australians, Roger Wickett, Kevin Lees and Tony Carroll, they all played for, partied, and argued among each other on the Brockton Carousel. One game in 1988 captured it all. The depth, the grit, the heart, and fight that epitomized a Brockton Point side from the 1980's, the game against Windsor Cricket Club, the Ontario club champions. Peter MacDonald writing for the Canadian Cricketer described the game as follows:

The Scorecard

Jack Kyle, the eminence grise of Canadian Cricket, says that the stand between Wickett and Van Twest for the 1st wicket was among the finest he has ever seen.




Photo of 1988 side. Canadian Club Champions

The new decade of the 1990's saw Brockton fall back to the pack. I was getting into my 40's and looking to leave the game behind. The mainstays of the side were a bunch of brash 25 and a little bit year olds, Harry Kallkut and Ian Tait. Our foreign contingent was represented by Don Schewan, an accountant from New Zealand and Ross Charlton. In 1992 by magic the club repeated as 1st division champions. Schewan had a stellar year, not to be repeated. Kallkut scored at least one quick fire century. Ian Tait stumbled through the captaincy and got to the post ahead of the Meralomas.

In 1993-94 Manoj Perera was being groomed to captain the 1st XI. He had in his charge 6 or 7 BC caps, Baldwin, Gunaratna, Dixon and the Seebarans. Nonetheless, Brockton stumbled and bumbled through a series of lackluster seasons.

In 1995 we were successful in obtaining a "Casino License". We purchased a mountain of landscaping equipment; mowers, rollers, and built a shed and set about constructing a grass wicket at Balaclava Park. Two new recruits to the side, Clive Halloway and Andy Goring, as well as the old standby Ian Tait, took a particular shine to wicket construction and maintenance. We maintained the track and improved it in each year until it was wiped out in a "sanding operation" by the Parks Board in 2000. We may have not been the best cricketing side between '95 and '00 but we raised the most money, brought cricket to over 10,000 school children, and sponsored two cricketing festivals of note, the Harmony Festival of Cricket and Culture in '98, a 3 day event, and a similar event in '99, the Cobra Festival of Cricket and Culture, in conjunction with the BCCA. Unfortunately, in 1999 we were cut off from government funding, and as a result the cricket festival and the grass wicket experiments were suspended.



Harmony and Cobra Cricket Festivals