Our Test Star Coury
“We are going to have the best test venue in the region, it’s going to be a bit on the small side but the beauty of Warner Park and the beauty of St. Kitts will make ours a test venue of envy”. This is Leroy Coury’s heartfelt feeling of the spanking new Warner Park facility.
Coury went on to talk about the venue “Can you imagine that when the ICC official came here that there was no stadium at all, just the bare Warner Park but they fell in love with the country? The potential of Warner Park is one of the reasons why we got selected to host a World Cup leg,” Coury intimated.
“The Test match here will be like history repeating itself. About 100 years ago the first English cricket team came to our shores. A match of sorts was played at Caines’ Pasture and the land was said to be a washed with hundreds (some say thousands) of English people. Many of them later bought land and became absentee owners of land in St. Kitts. This time around we will have visitor tourists who will come to see the lovely game being played in a beautiful setting. The test will do a lot to inspire some of the young cricketers we have here. I trust that they will take careful note of what they see and use it as an inspiration to achieve that status. I believe too that Lara will be anxious to come back to Warner Park. It was years ago at age 16 that he made one of his first centuries against the Leewards right here at Warner Park. So this is another anticipated benefit of the new stadium to bring the World’s best batsman to our shores,” Coury said. (NB Coury is one who thinks that Lara should be recalled as captain of the West Indies side).
Added to that if he is healthy Tendulkar will be a part of the touring team and so we will have two of the top ten batsmen at one time.
Coury started his career in 1955 and this spanned until 1970. He was not an immediate selection at the national level when he first started as a guy called Tom Jones was selected ahead of him. His break came when the said Tom Jones was roughed up in a game, he was struck for three 6’s in one over and was very expensive. Coury was called in to replace him. He immediately justified his selection with 3 for 38 from 28 mesmerizing overs against Nevis. In spite of that St. Kitts still lost the game but the record will show that it was by some highly questionable decisions.
As a right arm leg break and googly bowler things were not easy at the start. He was so scared in his first competitive game at club level that when he was brought on to bowl he resorted to bowling off breaks. It was only after some encouragement by his team mates, family and friends that he summed up the courage to twirl the wrist and from then never looked back.
Coury has the distinction as the only bowler who the great master blaster has not scored from. Twice in Antigua dashing promising youngster came up against the ripping leg breaks and googlies from Coury and twice he failed to score off him. After a brief confusion about an umpiring decision Viv Richards was reinstated to bat but it did not avail him much. Coury called him down the track called the track then told him down bother. BUT the best wicket keeper in the region (Auckland Hector was behind the stumps) it was a fait accompli. In the second innings the youngster was having none of this he stayed in his crease and tried to hoist Coury out of the grounds only to find the athletic Clem Hicks on the long on boundary taking a superlative catch.
Vivian Richards though grew into the legend he is today and later impressed the Coury as one of the best batsman he has seen. A cover drive off Vanburn Holder playing for Barbados against the Leewards at Warner Park still stands out in his mind today as the best shot he as ever seen. “The ball went all along the ground over the ropes and struck the transformer at the south west end of the park. Coury said.
(That made me imagine that the ball could have gone for 8 runs – four from the center wicket and four from the west wicket).
Coury success spanned a Leewards Islands defeat of Guyana at Warner Park an impressive performance against Pakistan in Antigua in 1959. So in 1965 West Indies was looking for a leg spinner to travel to Australia he was in the minds of the selectors. Unfortunately he was from the smaller islands. Coury was one of the few bowlers to pose difficulty to Bob Cowper the brilliant Australian captain who toured the West Indies and played against the Leewards. Coury swears that when they played against him that he had him plumb in front, the entire team was convinced as well but the umpire shook his head. Cowper was then on 18 he went on tot make 165.
He too recalls Gilbert’s resistance with the bat in the match against Australia.
“Yeah I was on the other end when Gilbert was going great guns. I told him to take his time but he never bothered with me and went on attacking until he fell for 84,” Coury recounted.
Playing cricket around the island in various communities was also a apart of Coury’s legacy.
“You wouldn’t believe that we played against a one hand man by the name of Brady hailing from Sandy Point. It was amazing to see how he held the bat but he definitely played,” Coury said.
It was on one of these sorties that Coury bagged his first ever hat-trick against Old Road. The team from Basseterre had only made 99 and the crowd in the area had a confident air that this was their game. However Coury did not read their script. He went on rip apart the heart of their batting taking 5 wickets in the match including the hat-trick.
Taking wickets was not only done at the local level at the sub regional level as well. Coury’s bag of wickets used to over flow. The record of taking 8 wickets in each innings of a match still stands from 1968. This was against Antigua when in the same match Len Harris broke the record for the highest individual score of 216. This was previously held by two Kittitians. One Calvin Wilkin had 167 and that was broken by George McMahon with 192 then Harris double stood tall. Coury also had a match haul of 15 wickets a few years earlier.
Coury’s comparison of cricket over the generations pointed to the fact that the bats today are better the balls are harder and as a result runs are easier to come by. However guys in our day seemed to have a greater appetite for batting and we played a lot more cricket, hours and hours of practice.
It was obvious that the hard work was necessary as St. Kitts had two other very good spinners in his time. Edgar Gilbert and Austin Eddy, all three were so successful that the St. Kitts team looked like India at one time with three spinners.
“I never got a chance to bat much but my best score that I can recall was 80 against St. Georges.”
Coury even established his own line of cricket ball that today’s generation grew accustomed to. It was called the Coury Ball as it had his name inscribed on the side.