Nicholas Clarke

The Queen's Park Oval's Crick­et Her­itage Mu­se­um was opened to the pub­lic at the Bri­an Lara Pavil­ion on Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain re­cent­ly. It had been of­fi­cial­ly launched on No­vem­ber 25th.

The mu­se­um is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween the Queen's Park Crick­et Club and the Min­istry of Tourism, which pledged $300,000 to­wards the project. It show­cas­es the his­to­ry of crick­et in T&T and in the West In­dies from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, with spe­cial at­ten­tion to the events that took place at the Queen's Park Oval.

There is a record of the de­vel­op­ment of the Club from its days at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah to the very first days at the Queen's Park Oval.

The mu­se­um's un­of­fi­cial cu­ra­tor Stephen Al­mon­doz was sin­gled out for spe­cial men­tion. In his fea­ture ad­dress, Min­is­ter of Tourism Joseph Ross said the min­istry was proud to have been a part of the ven­ture.

Among the arte­facts in the mu­se­um are an au­to­graphed bat of the 1950 West In­dies Team that won its first Test over Eng­land at Lord's, the orig­i­nal deed which trans­ferred the present premis­es to the club, the first tenor pan tuned by El­lie Man­nette one and one of the orig­i­nal turn­stiles in­stalled in the ground.

There is al­so a spe­cial sec­tion de­vot­ed to the Bri­an Lara era which in­cludes the bats he used dur­ing his world record break­ing in­nings of 375, 501 not out, 400 not out and a video chart­ing the high­lights of his ca­reer. The Queen's Park Crick­et Club was found­ed in 1891 and cur­rent­ly has over 3,000 mem­bers. It has pro­duced sev­er­al no­table play­ers in­clud­ing Jef­frey Stollmey­er, Ger­ry Gomez, Michael Joey Carew, Bryan and Char­lie Davis, Deryck Mur­ray, Bri­an Lara, Dwayne and Dar­ren Bra­vo, Kieron Pol­lard and Adri­an Barath.

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Ad­mis­sion for the mu­se­um is $30 for lo­cal adults, US $10 for for­eign­ers, $15 for se­nior cit­i­zens and $15 for stu­dents.