Clive Lloyd of the West Indies batting during the fourth day of the 3rd West Indies v England Test Match played at the Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados on the 16th March 1981. The West Indies won the match by 298 runs. (Photo by Bob Thomas/Getty Images)
The Demerara Cricket Club (DCC) was established in 1912 as an alternative to the then British-dominated Georgetown Cricket Club. Formed by Portuguese businessmen, including M. Gonsalves, E.C. Buck and Joseph Gonsalves, DCC too restricted its membership in its early years – to Portuguese only.
Membership was open to anyone after the First World War and the club went on to produce a number of world class cricketers, such as Lance Gibbs, Clive Lloyd and Roy Fredericks. DCC also turned out a number of other players who represented the national team and the West Indies. Among them are Maurius Pacheo (MP) Fernandes who captained the West Indies to their first Test match victory; the Christiani brothers – Cyril and Robert; Roger Harper; Keith Semple; and more recently Travis Dowlin, Christopher Barnwell and Derwin Christian. DCC also produced two members of the Under-19 World Cup winning team in Bangladesh 2016 with Tevin Imlach and Kemo Paul playing key roles in the victory.
Ernest Christiani, Harry Christiani, Colin Wiltshire, Philbert Blair, Vibert Durjan, Andrew Lyght, Mark Harper, Nolan McKenzie, Linden Joseph and Garvin Nedd are a few of the other club members who developed at DCC and later represented Guyana at the senior level.
Like all clubs DCC has its share of stalwart members who did not wear the national team colours but were nevertheless key players in the club’s success. Some those include Fred Wills and Chetram Singh, both administrators; Sherlock Atwell; Linden Lyght, the club’s second division captain for some 20 years; Lennox Hunte; the late Mertlon Bagot and Ian John.
The DCC was (and still is) the only cricket club in Georgetown to be located in an entirely residential neighborhood. As fate would have it, that neighbourhood was a middle-class one, in which residents understood and appreciated the social value of such a facility in their midst. The fact that DCC has survived, and even prospered at times, for over a hundred years, is testimony to its integration into its social settings.
DCC is now a member of the Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA), which in turn is a member of the Demerara Cricket Board (DCB), which is itself a member of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB). Before the GCA and DCB came into existence after 1990, however, DCC participated in competitions ran directly by the GCB, the most prestigious of which was the Case Cup, for division one teams in Demerara. Under the leadership of the versatile legal luminary, lawyer Fred Wills, DCC won the Case Cup on six occasions, with Colin Wiltshire playing a major part by getting the most runs.
Between 1991 and 1996 DCC won the national 50-over knock-out competition three times, lost in the final once and reached the semi-finals twice. In 2009, the club won the national club 20/20 competition and participated in the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) Regional Twenty20 cricket competition in Trinidad. Among the other competitions the club won are the 2011 GCA first division 20/20 and two-innings competitions. DCC also won the Guyana Cricket Board Club-of-the-Year award for being the best-run club in Guyana in 2011. In 2012, DCC won the GCA Brain Street Under-15 competition for the third time.
In July 2012 DCC celebrated its centenary year. Celebrations included a visit by the Atlantis Cricket Club of New York, a fund-raising costume party, a dinner and ball by the Hotel Tower pool side among other activities.
Additional sources: http://guyana-cricket.com/
