Bourda, or officially Georgetown Cricket Club Ground, is a

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

ground in Georgetown,

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

, used by the

Guyanese cricket team The Guyana cricket team is the representative first class cricket team of Guyana. The side does not take part in any international competitions, but rather in inter-regional competitions in the Caribbean, such as the Regional Four Day Competi ...

for matches with other nations in the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

as well as some Test matches involving the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

. The ground is one of the two cricket stadiums in the

South American South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

mainland and is uniquely surrounded by a

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive ...

for flood-prevention and drainage reasons.

History

The stadium is located in Bourda in

Georgetown, Guyana Georgetown is the capital (political), capital and largest city of Guyana. It is situated in Demerara-Mahaica, region 4, on the Atlantic Ocean coast, at the mouth of the Demerara River. It is nicknamed the "Garden City of the Caribbean." It is t ...

between Regent Street and North Road, and is home to the Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC). The ground is reminiscent of old baseball stadiums, due to its

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a canti ...

stands. The Ladies stand is notable, but the more modern, such as the Rohan Kanhai stand, blend in well. The liveliest part of the ground with the ubiquitous music and DJs is at The Mound, an unprotected area. The ground was dubbed "The Cornerstone" in 1930 after a game against visiting England. While the crowd are passionate about their cricket, they are also among the most volatile, with mini riots and

pitch invasion A pitch invasion (known in North America as field storming or rushing the field) occurs when a person or a crowd of people spectating a sporting event run onto the competition area, usually to celebrate or protest an incident, or sometimes as ...

s not uncommon. The worst incident was in 1979 during a

World Series Cricket World Series Cricket (WSC) was a commercial professional cricket competition staged between 1977 and 1979 which was organised by Kerry Packer and his Australian television network, Nine Network. WSC ran in commercial competition to establishe ...

SuperTest when the pavilion was ransacked and players hid in the changing rooms wearing their helmets for added protection. There would be a similar incident in 1999, when the West Indies, hosted Australia at the ground, with Australia needing 3 to tie and 4 to win off the last ball of the match, there was a full scale pitch invasion with Australian captain

Steve Waugh Stephen Rodger Waugh (born 2 June 1965) is an Australian former international cricketer and twin brother of cricketer Mark Waugh. A right-handed batsman, he was also a medium-pace bowler. As Australian captain from 1997 to 2004, he led Austral ...

's bat almost being stolen from his grasp and the match deemed a tie, after the West Indies, could not effect a run out, due to the stumps having been stolen after

Shane Warne Shane Keith Warne (13 September 1969 – 4 March 2022) was an Australian international cricketer, whose career ran from 1991 to 2007. Warne played as a right-arm leg spin bowler and a right-handed batsman for Victoria, Hampshire and Australia ...

, had made his ground on the second run. Due to the volatile nature of the crowd, the result was not announced until after the players had left the venue. It has hosted 30 Test matches and 10

One Day International A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...

. Four of the last five Tests at the ground have ended in draws.Cricinfo Stats Guru filter for Bourda
Statserver.cricket.org, retrieved 16 March 2006 The ground, which has a capacity of around 10,000, opened in 1884, has seen Test cricket since 1930, and is the only cricket stadium in the world to be situated below sea level. The ground has a moat round it to protect the pitch from flooding. It is the oldest ground in the Caribbean. Cricket matches between

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

and GCC were played there as early as 1883, and later between GCC and teams from Britain, in 1895 and 1897. It hosted its first Test in February 1930 against England, which the home side won by 289 runs and

George Headley George Alphonso Headley OD, MBE (30 May 1909 – 30 November 1983) was a West Indian cricketer who played 22 Test matches, mostly before World War II. Considered one of the best batsmen to play for the West Indies and one of the greatest cri ...

scored a century in each innings.

Clive Lloyd Sir Clive Hubert Lloyd (born 31 August 1944) is a Guyanese-British former cricketer who played for the West Indies cricket team. As a boy he went to Chatham High School in Georgetown. At the age of 14 he was captain of his school cricket team ...

and Rohan Kanhai have stands named after them at Bourda. The ground did not host matches for the 2007 Cricket World Cup, as a new stadium, the

Providence Stadium The Providence Stadium or Guyana National Stadium is a sports stadium in Guyana, replacing Bourda as the national stadium. The stadium was built specifically to host Super Eight matches in the 2007 Cricket World Cup held in March and April 2007. ...

, was built. The Guyanese authorities, however, insisted that the Bourda would still be used for first-class cricket.

References

External links

Cricinfo

{{Buildings in Guyana Houses completed in 1884 Test cricket grounds in the West Indies Cricket grounds in Guyana Georgetown, Guyana Football venues in Georgetown, Guyana

History

See also

References

External links