A life in cricket and sport made an important difference

Jerome “Jerry” Julien Neilson, my friend and cricket-playing, cricket-watching and discussing pardner of 55 years, passed recently into eternity.  His life, outside of his family, was devoted to cricket, football, indeed all sports.  In return, this devotion to sport brought him great benefits in the form of ambition and capacity to achieve: he was intent at succeeding in whatever he did; and he did.   

That character trait of commitment, gained from his genes and from being imbedded in cricket and all sports from almost infancy, also brought discipline.  He learned from playing and watching sports a sense of the beauty and transcending inherent value of the activities that exalted him to a life above mere existence. 

One major element of the sportsman that was Jerry was his tolerance of others and their views.   That’s one of the virtues learned from contesting and playing cricket in the spirit it was meant to be played in.   That tolerance and understanding of others filtered into his life and formed part of his character. 

In our lives and interaction as teenagers and young men we lost and won against others and each other, but never was there any acrimony in defeat.   At the end in victory or defeat, we would go to Mr. Nurse’s parlour, buy a snowball with condensed milk on the top and the loss or victory would be forgotten. 

In his life, Jerry achieved awareness beyond that which was just in front of him and his friends.  His expanse of appreciation related to the world whether it be in the form of cricket throughout the Commonwealth, encompassing the Caribbean, England, Australia, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.  He did not allow his roots in tiny Trinidad and Tobago and an even tinnier hamlet of Port of Spain to restrict his vision of the world.

It must be said that that vision of the world was brought home to him through cricket and the other great international sporting events wherever they were played: “The Rumble in the Jungle”, Football World Cups, the English, Italian and Spanish football leagues. 

We watched at the very said Queen’s Park Oval clashes between our cycling champions of the 1960s Roger Gibbon, Fitzroy Hoyte and Leslie King as they matched pedal for pedal against the great cyclists of the world, the likes of Mario Vanegas and the Europeans Pierre Trentin, Daniel Morelon and others.  

So too did Jerry appreciate our athletes: Mottley, Roberts, Skinner and the rest of that world-class relay team of the 1960s.  That followship carried over to Crawford and Ato.  Very exciting for Jerry, and he conveyed that excitement to us his ball-playing friends, in the victory of Trinidad and Tobago’s Christopher Forde, the Mr. Universe 1964, Tall Man class.  So too did Jerry celebrate Mike Hercules who was prominent in the Mr. Universe competitions of the time in the Medium Height category. 

Jerry even had a few tilts at being a bodybuilder, we humoured him. 

Nonetheless, cricket was the centre of our existence and all else flowed around it.  When it was raining outside or when we were completely tired physically or night came upon us, we retreated to Jerry’s invention of Dice Cricket.

 In Dice Cricket all of the Test-playing nations, inclusive of South Africa were brought together to play on the same pitch.   Yes we were fully aware that racism was instituted in South Africa; nevertheless we were more focused on cricket, the great teams and players of the Spring Box. 

Jerry played street cricket and ran like mad to the barrack yard at Henry Street when the police vehicle was seen in the distance.  We played at the Queens Park Savannah, for a club in the then Trinidad Cricket Council League called Victoria.  

As spectators Jerry and the group were denizens of the Oval when England, Australia, India, Pakistan, New Zealand came to oppose our teams: Jerry in those times was a staunch supporter of Australia, of course, there were great arguments around that.   

Those were the times in the 1960s into the 1970s when Test cricket was king and you had to secure your place in the Oval early, a 5:30am timeline to reach the Oval gate on Tragarete Road.

We could afford no more than the concrete stands on the right of the Pavilion with a view from wide long-on, close enough to be behind the bowlers arm to get a good view of the batsman.  

Beyond the boundary, Jerry was a great fan of Football in Front D Grandstand. We sat on the sidelines close to the field and to the players.   We knew all about the best teams and players of the era. Franco, Sedley, Moutett, Pat Gomez, Corneal, K.B., Govia, Hamelsmith, Tyrone – “D Tank”, Lincoln Phillips, D Milo Man (Burnett), and the college boys who played in the POSFL: the Gamaldo Bros, “Bugs” Mendes, Holy Carrington, Galy Cummings and the lot.

Jerry was a die-hard supporter of Maple; I was Malvern and there was great challenge between us and others.  

In the international football arena, and this was before the era of satellite television and instant coverage of all kinds of sport, we followed World Cup Football on the Rediffusion box on the wall which carried football and cricket from BBC radio.   Jerry’s height of satisfaction in football was the 1966 World Cup victory by his team, England.

Led by Jerry the statistician, we knew the scores, the histories of the players.  On a couple of occasions in the 1960s we bought editions of the Wisden, the bible of cricket , and feasted on the information.  “Trumper”, after the great Australian batsman of the early 20^th century, Jerry was named by a few of our teammates in Victoria Cricket Club, Jerry was a better than average young batsman.  

He followed closely the requirement for technique and had tons of patience. I well remember once batting with him and after a few balls, I danced down the wicket to hit the bowler over mid-on, the ball dribbled no more than a few feet away. Jerry came down the wicket to quietly chide me about playing that wild heave: “the bowling soft let’s take our time and we will get plenty runs,” he advised. We both got 30 odd runs. 

Jerry, like all of us, came from very humble roots and to the average onlooker, neither he nor anyone of us could expect a successful material life and accomplishment of “respectability”.  But little did they know that the sporting path we followed in our early life laid the foundation for the measure of success and accomplishment achieved. 

Oh, I almost forgot, Jerry and our small group also became great fans of horse racing in the “Big Yard” Savannah.  We followed the horses and Jerry and the rest of us also had the occasional few dollars to flutter on a horse or two – but not very successfully I must admit.  Jerry was a great fan of Chally Jones, the Barbadian and West Indian top jockey.  So too were we addicted to the alloo pies and press in the Savannah. 

Just to squeeze in another aspect of Jerry’s life was his love for music local, regional and from around the world.  He played a double second in a small steelband band, Sputnik Stars from Duke between Henry and Frederick streets. Calypso, steelband, jazz, Latin American musics were all part of our lives. Jerry even played Timbales in a combo, Flintstones.  In the band he was nicknamed “Tito” after the great American-Puerto Rican musician; Tito Puente.

An incident in Woodford Square in the heat of 1970 Black Power activities said much about Jerry and the relationship we had with each other and mankind. “Look ah white boy,” we heard someone say as we were walking through the Square.  We looked around, these two dougla boys and Jerry to see de white boy. When we saw no white boy, it dawned on us that it was Jerry they were referring to. Collectively we let go a howl of laughter and embraced “de white boy”.

Jerry led off on the road to developing a profession and a career as our sporting lives began to slow: we had to earn a living now. His brother, Lester Goetz, the most studious of the lot of us, went off to Jamaica to study medicine and I began the study of journalism.  

Through practice and accounting qualifications gained from the University of London and with the kind of devotion and discipline he had given to sport, Jerry became an accountant.   His working in Dice Cricket with numbers was an early demonstration of his capacity for handling the figures and complicated data.   He rose to the position of being the Accountant of the Tatil Insurance Company; subsequently he operated in a free-lance capacity as the accountant to a number of companies. 

Jerry came full circle around to serve as Secretary of the Queens Park Cricket Club to then president of the club, former West Indies cricketer, Gerry Gomez. 

The core point of this reflection on my friend, Jerome Jerry Neilson, is to make the link between cricket/sport and the contribution they made to Jerry’s life, like those of many others, this writer included.  

 Most importantly, Jerry had around him at critical times a loving family made up of his wife Oscarlyn Harewood, who tended lovingly to his needs towards the end.  Left behind are his daughter Tisha Neilson, who Jerry gave me the honour of being Godfather to, and his son, Jerome Junior.  

A great constant of Jerry’s life was his “lil” brother, Lester; who became Dr. Lester Goetz, the most senior Urologist in the West Indies.

These are the family members, in-laws, Lester’s wife Ophelia, and a tight circle of friends, inclusive of Amaz Ali, who sent Jerry off from his Phoenix Park home in which he enjoyed peace and love and now rests in an open field in the area.  

Jerry my brother, I say on behalf of your family and friends, may God Bless you on your journey home.