'The <i>balata</i> sting like rass bai'

‘Old talk’ with an elderly family friend, because Debita Harripersaud is fond of that kind of natter, was the spur to make the product which launched a great Guyanese nostalgia. The images evoked are of the innocence of the countryside and of playing, of boys young and old lashing with coconut fronds balls made from balata.

Having grown up in a cricket-mad family, Harripersaud, a physiotherapist who sometimes works with the Guyanese team, felt it fitting to conceive a tribute to the time and ethos during the World Cup. Decades after the bleeding of balata – the sap of the Bulletwood tree – has tapered off from a large-scale activity to a tiny crafts industry for souvenir items, she commissioned 200 special edition balata balls to be handmade by the Makushi tribe of the Guyanese interior.

These have autographed by the three of the four living legends of Guyanese cricket: Rohan Kanhai, the master batsman, Clive Lloyd, the supreme captain, and Lance Gibbs, the finest spinner in West Indian history (Roy Fredericks, the fourth, died at 57 seven years ago).

All, to varying degrees, have had experience with balata balls, as have hundreds of others who grew up in the Fifties. Times were hard, money was tight, equipment had to be made at home. Balls were made with balata, whose other uses have ranged from cavity fillings to golf balls.

The balata would be bled into calabashes and spread out to harden into sheets, then boiled, then the hot sap shaped using curved bottoms of cider or rum bottles. A cork would be inserted inside, so that when the ball fell into the ubiquitous trenches of Guyana, it would float to the surface. So dense could the balata be sometimes that buoying it would be impossible. A worn-out ball could be revived by reboiling the balata.

A balata ball was heavy, and barely bounced – though it responded well to fast breaks – so it’s a largely full-pitch game. Above all, to say it in local, ‘it sting like rass bai, if you don’t get you foot out of the way it kill your shin.’

“The one word that, if you talk to anyone who’s played with balata, they will tell you is ‘Ouch’” says Roger Persaud, a Guyanese cricket writer for Stabroek News, who opened batting for the USA a couple of decades ago.

Clive Lloyd has pointed out that nothing encourages footwork like a balata ball: when it hurt it hurt. It is sometimes offered as a theory for the static footwork among some of the modern batsmen, though the great Everton Weekes has a different explanation entirely: “They never learnt how to dance.”

The balls of Guyana have been many. Balata’s time came and went. They were replaced by much lighter cork balls which were cheap but wore out after some use.

‘Compo’ balls – a composite of cork and rubber – were big for a while. They bounced, were of a reasonable weight and lasted a long time. Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s father would take him to a large abandoned room of a community centre and have him practice against compo shooting off a wet concrete floor – some use soap-water too – to sharpen reflexes. The young Chanderpaul would also be taken to a sandy bank by the sea, to practice in the wind against the ‘bumper ball’, a light sponge ball, which bounces to the eyebrow and swing feet.

Mention must be made also of the superbly named ‘Windpuss’, a battered tennis ball of flannel, dipped in puddles to provide it some zip. The most popular ball for informal cricket now is tape-ball – insulation tape around a tennis ball. All, you will note, are balls for concrete, for though Guyana is a land of green, it is also a land of many waters, and the ball which can work in mud and squelch is yet to be devised.