Tour Diary

Melbourne in Kingston

Tucked away in a quiet corner of Kingston, at the end of Courtney Walsh Drive, is the Melbourne Cricket Club

The Melbourne Cricket Club in Kingston, Jamaica, May 14, 2006

ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Tucked away in a quiet corner of Kingston, at the end of Courtney Walsh Drive, is the Melbourne Cricket Club. Founded way back in 1892, the club boasts a glittering array of alumni, serving as a feeder for Jamaica's state team. Arthur Barrett and Sam Morgan led the way; Michael Holding and Courtney Walsh, who is the current president, have ends named after them; Marlon Samuels and Carlton Baugh jr carry on the tradition.

Like Sabina Park, it has a bar near the pavilion, with photographs of famous teams decorating the walls. The dressing room is quaint – with wooden benches arranged in a classroom-like setting and shelves on one wall that act as kit-bag enclosures. One of the shelves has a rusty label that says C Walsh. He’s all over town this fella – in his bar Cuddyz in New Kingston, in his sports shop in Courtney Walsh boulevard, in Sabina Park ...

Unusually, especially for a club ground, it has sponsors' labels on the boundary walls. Even more unusually, just like in Sabina Park, the roof railings have a list of all batsmen who have scored centuries in both innings of a Test. Lawrence Rowe, a local hero, figures there; as does Sunil Gavaskar, whose legend still lives on here. But it’s a queer statistic for public consumption. List of hundreds and five-wicket hauls is one thing; list of twin-centuries quite another. Imagine the odds of finding the name Wajahatullah Wasti on the roof of a small cricket club called Melbourne based in Kingston!

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan is a former assistant editor at Cricinfo

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