Noreiga gone but not forgotten

JACK NOREIGA has gone but he will certainly not be forgotten. In fact, I owe my success on the cricket field to Jack Noreiga, to date the only West Indian bowler to take nine wickets in an innings in a Test match. I remember Noreiga watching me bowl left arm medium pace for Sporting Club at the Queen’s Park Savannah in 1980. After a practice stint, Noreiga approached me and asked bluntly, “Why don’t you bowl spin? You will be more successful.” I wondered who was this man offering me such advice. After hearing it was Jack Noreiga, I listened attentively. I remember telling him that I was about to move out of North Zone cricket to the Championship Division with Crompton being the likely club. At the time there were big names like Phil Simmons and Harold Joseph, another mystery spinner. To Noreiga, that was great news. So between seasons, Noreiga showed me how to grip the ball, although he was a right hand off-spinner. He said I had the natural movement being a left-hander to spin the ball both ways. Well, I went to Crompton and after playing on the second team, finally got the chance in the top league. I remember going to Cunjal to play against Yorkshire and nearing the end of the first day’s play, which was just two overs into the innings. I was handed the ball by skipper Lawrence Trim. In the space of three balls, the turn was so much that Yorkshire closed on two for two runs, both victims falling to my bowling. I spent three years with Crompton before realising that fete match cricket was better. I had a change of heart in 1998 when former Trinidad and Tobago batsman Gregory Asgarali asked me to join Invincible Club in the North Zone.

I told Noreiga that I was returning to competitive cricket at age 38. He said, “You are a spin bowler, so you can bowl whole day.” How right he was! The rest is now history. I bowled Invincible to victory over Ebony in the kockout final that year winning the “Man of the Match Award”. In 2001, I grabbed eight for 43 against Silver Mill in a three-day match and one of the first persons to call was Jack Noreiga. “Well done, my boy, but you are yet to get nine (wickets)”. That year, I topped the bowling averages in the North Zone and Noreiga was pleased as punch as I was finally getting on top of the batsman. Earlier this year, Noreiga called me again, this time after reading that I got eight for 22 against Carenage United in a limited overs match. “What happen to you, you can’t get nine wickets?” he teased. I never got the chance to tell Jack that this was another good season for me as I made the North team in the Courts Inter-Zone series. Jack was also well-known in the horseracing circles, having owned horses. When I became a member of the Betting Levy Board (BLB), we often met at the Santa Rosa track at Arima where he would ask for my board’s help in saving racing. But there will be no more Jack Noreiga, having succumbed to stomach cancer at age 67. He was cremated yesterday after a moving funeral service at the Santa Rosa RC Church, Arima. May he rest in peace.