Queen’s Park Crick­et Club (QPCC) re­cent­ly host­ed two leg­ends of Trinidad and To­ba­go—ca­lyp­son­ian Dr David Rud­der and crick­eter Lar­ry Gomes—at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

This was to recog­nise the achieve­ments of two of T&T’s out­stand­ing leg­ends. The first event was the ho­n­our­ing of Rud­der for his ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion to ca­lyp­so and crick­et and his be­ing giv­en the sta­tus of hon­orary mem­ber­ship.

In his ad­dress, QPCC pres­i­dent, Dr Nigel Ca­ma­cho, stat­ed, “Dr Rud­der’s pas­sion for West In­dies crick­et was ce­ment­ed when he penned Ral­ly Around the West In­dies. This was a mu­si­cal ge­nius whose pas­sion for West In­dies crick­et in­spired him to write the un­for­get­table clas­sic Ral­ly Round the West In­dies, which be­came the an­them of the re­gion­al team on the world stage.

“This, to me, is the great­est recog­ni­tion and ho­n­our that could have been be­stowed up­on a Caribbean song­writer and artist. The sig­nif­i­cance of to­day’s ho­n­our­ing of Dr David Rud­der at QPCC tran­scends so much; it sig­ni­fies so much… Dr David Rud­der, on be­half of the QPCC, I am so proud to be­stow up­on you, on be­half of the Queen’s Park Crick­et Club, the sta­tus of hon­orary mem­ber­ship.”

In the oth­er event, which im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed, QPCC host­ed for­mer crick­eter “Mr De­pend­able” Lar­ry Gomes in a meet-and-greet book sign­ing ses­sion at­tend­ed by mem­bers of the Oval, in­clud­ing Gomes’ for­mer West In­dies team man­ag­er and Test crick­eter and for­mer QPCC pres­i­dent Willie Ro­driguez.

In re­marks re­lat­ed to this event, Ca­ma­cho ex­pressed his sen­ti­ments: “What a won­der­ful oc­ca­sion for QPCC to have Lar­ry Gomes, ‘Mr De­pend­able,’ here to­day to sign copies of his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy for mem­bers of the club. Thanks to two Parkites for mak­ing this hap­pen, name­ly Nass­er Khan, a re­cent HBM na­tion­al awardee, and Hugh Hen­der­son, Gomes’ men­tor.

“Nass­er au­thored the book with Lar­ry, and we are all thank­ful for that. The oth­er Parkite, Hugh Hen­der­son, played a sig­nif­i­cant role in Lar­ry’s ear­ly years, prepar­ing him to be the fa­mous West In­dies crick­eter he would be­come. One match at the QPO in 1983 against In­dia stands out; West In­dies bowled out In­dia rel­a­tive­ly cheap­ly on the first day.

“Then the all-con­quer­ing West In­dies went in­to bat, ex­cite­ment build­ing that late af­ter­noon, but be­fore you knew it, West In­dies were 1 run for 3 wick­ets! Greenidge, Haynes, and Richards are gone. In came Mr De­pend­able to join his skip­per Clive Lloyd, and they bat­ted and bat­ted. They put on 237 runs to steer the Windies out of trou­ble. That, in a nut­shell, was Mr De­pend­able, and that in­nings helped ce­ment his lega­cy,” Ca­ma­cho said.