The Keith Boyce Memorial Cricket Tournament, played in memory of the former Barbados and West Indies fast bowling all-rounder, is into its ninth year. Organised primarily by a committee from the Boscobel Sports and Social Club in St Peter, this year’s tournament started on March 8 and will end on April 28 with the final at the Keith Boyce Sports Complex in Diamond Corner.
Fourteen teams are contesting the tournament, in which matches are played at mainly venues in the north, including Diamondshire, Boscobel, KMV Oval, St Clements, Crab Hill and Belleplaine. Boscobel president Lybron Sobers, the tournament coordinator, spoke to SUNSPORT’s Haydn Gill about the competition.
GILL: What prompted the establishment of the tournament?
SOBERS: The idea came up at a meeting of the executive committee of the Boscobel Sports and Social Club in 2006. We wanted to do something to remember Keith Boyce.
He passed away in 1996. He lived at Gays, close to our playing field. We decided that we should do something in his memory that would make the people in Boscobel, Gays, Diamondshire and Barbados remember Keith Boyce.
By 2007, the competition had started. Every year the final is played on Heroes Day. Keith Boyce was our hero in the north. Over the years, we’ve been having ten to 14 teams. This year we have 14 teams, inclusive of four school teams – Queen’s College, St Leonard’s, Combermere and Alleyne.
GILL: What has been the response from the community?
SOBERS: Over the years, we’ve been having good response from the spectators, both from the community and from outside. The teams in the north have been very responsive. It’s a competition for any team that is based in the north. It also opens itself to school teams.
One of the objectives of the competition is to identify youngsters from schools who are pretty good, both academically and sportswise, and to see what we can do for them. We also want to give teams in the north practice for upcoming BCA [Barbados Cricket Association] competitions.
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