After all, the Irish have a close affinity with West Indian people and memories of their heroics in 2007 are still fresh in the minds of the Guyanese as that’s where the team stayed for the Super Eights. But there were also a few wise old cricket heads in the Media Box that had close contacts with Ulster cricket in the past, and who were cheering very loudly every time the Irish bowlers took a wicket against the English.
Mark Harper (Ex-Donacloney and Sion Mills), Roger Harper (ex-Woodvale), and Neil Barry (ex-Lisburn) all send their best wishes to their many friends in Northern Ireland, and each was glowing in their praise of the people they met when they played and stayed in the Province.
Big Mark was a prodigious hitter, and some of his feats at the factory grounds at Donacloney and Sion Mills are still warmly remembered by the legion of fans he gathered in the early Eighties. He also recalled with some fun the day he scored 198 in an Irish Senior Cup game and lost!
His younger brother Roger was the best player of the trio, and although he played only one season at the Ballygomartin Road, he still remembers a lot about NCU cricket, and the cold weather in Belfast! Roger was barely out of his teens when he played at Woodvale in the early Eighties, and of course he went on to become a West Indian test player, and national coach.
Neil Barry played three years at Lisburn in the Nineties, so some of the current players will still recall his cricket exploits and his contribution to the club. Neil rattled off the names of the players as if they were sitting at the dinner table beside him, and of course, he was high in praise for the Wallace Park guru Cecil Walker and his lovely wife Sylvia, who looked after him so well.
Cricket matches come and go in the passage of time, but it is the people you meet and the experiences that you have which last forever. Who would have thought that in faraway Guyana in South America, thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, there are three Caribbean cricketers who are still great ambassadors for Ulster and Irish cricket?
Thanks for the memories guys!
Clarence Hiles
Editor
