The materials from which the cricket score boards in the Queen's Park Oval may have changed through the years, and so too the location and sizes, but what has remained a constant is the fact that the operators, whether manually or electronically, have always come from Queen's Royal College.
Three men who still vividly remember manually operating the wooden Coca Cola scoreboard in the late 50's early 60's, Lenny Kirton, Packie Moore and Dwight Day, spoke of the "kicksy" days spent keeping scores for International cricket matches.
"It was always the members of the college's first eleven and some of the second eleven who were chosen to go to the Oval" explained Lenny. "At one stage there would be as many as 36 - 18 per shift from start to lunch, lunch to tea, and tea to end of play; but we found out that was too many, we had a lot of idlers and as the years went by brought the number down to 20. The thing is we were not hired people so there was no need to look at a minimum, it was a case that QRC''s cricketers were being given an opportunity to see good cricket."
Why has it up to today always been Queen's Royal College? Dave Francois, another QRC old boy remembers "Arthur Wilkinson the French teacher at QRC, an influential member in the pavilion getting the boys to score, and to this day the five who operate the electronic scoreboard from the Gerry Gomez Media Centre are from QRC." But do these five have the fun that their former peers had with the hands-on operation of the old wooden board, and even those who later worked on the newer Dexion board. At the end of this interview, photographer Keith Matthews and I had grave doubts.
In 1957 Kirton remembers receiving three shillings a day to buy lunch. Day and Moore got three of the new 25-cent pieces. But they agreed "it was enough for two roti and a drink, with a piece of change to play over and under the lucky seven below the scoreboard." Kirton reminisced "one day when Henley Wooding was our captain he went to collect our money, next thing we see him coming back with two shillings per scorer and a hops and cheese each, the Oval didn't have enough change."
Says Dwight "the drink was usually 'kite paper' juice from below the board, which contained a minute amount of citrus, we did not know what else, there was just plenty colouring making it the colour of kite paper, plenty sugar, plenty water and it was plenty sweet. One day I saw the juice man roll his sleeves up his ample arms to his shoulders and go down with his bare hands into the juice because his ladle was too short to stir."
Up to 1946 the scoreboard was located on the northwestern side of the ground, between where the Sir Errol Dos Santos and Geddes Grant Stands are today. In 1946 sponsorship came on the scene and the J.T. Johnson board was erected at the northeastern end of the ground (near to Park Nursing Home), followed by the Coca Cola board, and finally the West Indian Tobacco board. WITCO remains sponsors to the present time of the new electronic board.
When the threesome came on the scene, the big, new wooden Coca Cola scoreboard had been installed between grounds and the schoolboys' mound "basically blocking out the Audrey Jeffers House at the corner of Sweet Briar Road and Elizabeth Street."
The names of every member of the two teams were painted white on a black background on long boards. The scorers would find these boards lying flat on the floor of the three-storey scoreboard, which was made with rungs in the middle for easy access to the three tiers by the scorers. Four players' names were slotted into each storey and five scorers were allocated to each storey to deal with changes in statistics.
"The real action began ten to fifteen minutes before the start of play when the scorer telephoned from the pavilion telling us the batting order. Everybody would be charging around mounting the heavy boards. Even during a game, if a player went off the field, the slat had to be removed and the 12th man inserted at No 12 as fast as possible."
The tens and units of the batsmen's scores and the total score, in the middle of the board, were changed with the help of six rollers, while the hundred and extras were changed manually by number plates hooked onto the board. Then there were the bowlers' figures which had to be increased after every run scored off the bowler, by tin plates.
"According to your work station" says Lenny "you were kept busy, and any mistakes brought an immediate phone call from the pavilion. For instance, those who worked the top floor had nice work, they were watching cricket when their team was bowling."
A bad moment for these teenaged boys came when moving the fall of wickets' tin plates at the bottom of the scoreboard, (the present electronic board does not register the fall of wickets). Says Day with a rueful smile "that is where a number of people on grounds sat, we had to go down and walk along the plank and you used to get cuss for discommoding them. Somebody had to do it so you took your cuss."
Moore has never forgotten the hustle and bustle between innings: "We had ten minutes to transfer all boards, but you did not move anything for four minutes, the public must have a look at the final picture. Then our skipper would shout "change" and it was madness with all hands on deck as everything had to be back to zero, totally clean and changed in six minutes. "
Says Kirton "one day we started to change right away. The phone call from the pavilion came with a loud noooo, and there we were trying to remember what was last up."
"I also remember a tour when an appeal for light was granted. In Trinidad you do not come back out, so an appeal for light and we gone for the day. Luckily, we used to lime by Brian Murray's house around the corner on Tragarete Road. And we there talking about the cricket when somebody came running by the house to say cricket going on and there are no scorers. About four of us ran back to the oval and struggled for the last half an hour of play."
Packie will never forget the infamous bottle pelting in 1960 "when Charran Singh, the Aranguez left hand spin bowler was batting and umpire Eric Lee Kow gave him out. Within five minutes I have never seen so much bottle in my life, I did not know Trinidad had so much bottle far less the Oval. We stayed up there watching and to this day I remember a certain police superintendent running on to the field and pelting back bottles into the stand."
They all remember the late sportsman, Babsie Daniel, who very hurt by the behaviour, was walking around the boundary pleading with the spectators to stop, and was hit in the head by a bottle. "Peter May wrote about it in his book" says Dwight "that the English players walked off with a bleeding Daniel and asked if he were in pain, to which his reply was "not physically only in my heart."
"It was also the first time a test was played for six days" says Packie, "the sixth day was added to allow the Oval to clean after the bottles. So the game went from January 28 to 30 and February 1 to 3. England won by 256 runs."
Today, 40 plus years later, they smile and with shrugs of their older shoulders each in turn commented. "I couln't even lift that board now" said Lenny. Packie reminded him "we were 16 and 17 then so it was easy." Dwight rejoined "I am reluctant to even climb up a scoreboard now."
They all agreed "it was the best place to see the cricket from, with plenty kicks, which some of the time distracted us and we would make mistakes. But a phone call from the pavilion would immediately point out that a mistake was made."