HIGHWAY 1: BADGE MENZIES

Race, Cold War Politics, and Cricket in the British Empire: The True Story of Badge Menzies and the Infamous Test Match of 1954

It is very rare that two major books on any subject written sixty seven years apart by different authors have the same single historical photo of a certain event as the photo on the book’s front cover. One can surely think of authors separated by decades using a certain photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg delivering his famous speech, or a photo of John F. Kennedy in the Dallas Motorcade, or of Apollo 11 lifting off in 1969 with Neil Armstrong to grace the covers of their books written several decades apart, but a small localized riot in a sports stadium? Yet this is what has occurred in the sport of cricket where the riot occurred in a small and remote colony of the British Empire in February, 1954. The colony was British Guiana and the sport was cricket. The field was the famous Bourda Grounds in the capital city of Georgetown. The teams were England versus the West Indies.  The central figure in the controversy and whose decision sparked the riot was the umpire Badge Menzies. He became the target of the angry rioters and needed extended police protection by the British Governor who was ruling the colony as it was under emergency rule by the English Crown at the time.    

There have been riots at sports stadiums in different sports but none have ever appeared as the main photo on the front cover of a book, much less two books written almost seventy years apart. What was different about this riot? What was special about this cricket match, the two sides, and the players? What really happened in the colony? What was the full political and historical context? Who was the umpire Badge Menzies? How and why did he play the role he played? This paper attempts to answer these critical questions. The two books with the same front cover photo of Menzies and the riot are, “Cricket Cauldron: With Hutton in the Caribbean,” written by Alex Bannister in 1954, and the second one, “Who Only Cricket Know: Hutton’s Men in the West Indies 1953/54”, written by David Woodhouse in 2021. Woodhouse’s book won an unprecedented number of awards yet both authors fail to answer these critical questions, and even more glaringly, never really raise any of them in the first place. Both renowned and respected writers, they provide a narrative as suggested in their titles, primarily from the perspective of the English captain, Len Hutton and the English team, and the British press that accompanied that team. Bannister’s narrative of 1954 reads more like a colonial report of the notes gathered by Her Majesty’s royal emissaries of cricket while on a troubled tour of the West Indies, as those Caribbean colonies agitated and struggled for independence from the English Crown. His book has strong traces and residues of a colonial past and glosses over the riot as the spontaneous expression of an angry crowd of colonial subjects who had consumed too much alcohol and precipitated by the controversial call of Umpire Menzies. In his award winning 2021 book, Woodhouse tries to adopt a more balanced approach relying on Caribbean sources, press articles, and commentary with passing reference to the social and political context in British Guiana and the West Indies. However, he fails to articulate a cogent and coherent historical thesis or explanation as to how and why the riot as depicted on his front cover occurred. This paper attempts to correct that limited narrative and give a full and complete historical explanation of the riot.    

The umpire Badge Menzies is this central figure in this infamous and controversial test match. For the modern country of Guyana it was also a watershed day in its history, one that reflected a major point in the long, laborious struggle for equality and independence from the English Crown. The people were angry and rioted at the match. They had been holding and harboring boiling political grievances against the English and it was beginning to consume them and feed their passions. They were demanding equality and freedom. The rage that simmered in the hearts and minds of the people was simple: “The English cannot be trusted!” Politics and sports met, intertwined, and combined to form a highly combustible mix that ignited on the Bourda field that day, starting a fire that soon threatened to consume the entire country as British Guiana was already caught up in the great global struggle of the Cold War. All the elements came together to produce the first recorded incident at a Test match in the West Indies. It was an infamous day in the history of cricket and world sports.  It was an infamous day in the history of Guyana, the dissolution of the British Empire as it occurred after World War II, and in the history of the Cold War.  

This is the true story of that day, of how and why it happened. It is the true story of the central character on the scene that day, the Umpire, Badge Menzies. It is also the snapshot story of an Empire and its colonies and how that grand play unfolded in history with the Empire’s favorite sport, the beautiful game of cricket. I have spent most of my life wondering about the truth of this day. About a year ago, in the spring of 2023, I immersed myself in the quest of finding out what really happened. I tell the story from all of the perspectives that I carry. Firstly, I am the grandson of Badge Menzies and was born into cricket and the world of Bourda in 1958, four years after this infamous event. I therefore narrate it from a pure love and flair for the sport and its rich history as it spread throughout the vast British Empire. Secondly, I am a son of Guyana and explain it from a perspective of Guyana’s political history and the story of the country’s costly struggle for national liberation and independence from that Empire. It was an infamous moment in that struggle too. And finally, I combine my many years of study and thought in political science and history to present it as a valid and credible historical thesis which explains the event as a noteworthy one produced by the Cold War, that famous global struggle between the United States and the former Soviet Union which started after World War II, a struggle that dominated world politics and produced the world we live in today.

Edmund Neil Menzies, aka “Badge,” was the son of a Scotsman, Hector Cameron Menzies, and an East Indian woman named Sumatya from British Guiana, now Guyana. He was born in 1896 and died in December, 1965 in Georgetown, Guyana as the result of a motor scooter accident. In a nutshell, Menzies can be described as one of original “Godfathers” of cricket in the rich and storied history of Guyanese and West Indian cricket, from the post-World War I period through his death in 1965 and the final climactic movement towards Guyana’s independence from England which occurred in May, 1966. His name was once well known and celebrated throughout Guyana. He was also very active in politics and the nationalist movement to win political independence from England for Guyana and the other British colonies of the West Indies. A major part of his lifelong involvement in cricket was the struggle to racially integrate West Indian cricket at the highest levels.

Born into an English colony in 1896, Menzies enjoyed the great privileges, advantages, and opportunities from being the son of a white European. The British Empire at that time was a colonial empire strictly regimented along color, nationality, and racial lines. His mother, Sumatya, was a light skin East Indian woman, and the very young Menzies was often “mistaken” as being white, and “overlooked” as being mixed, and was granted access into the lifestyle, culture, and associations reserved exclusively for the English and other whites in British Guiana. Badge loved and played the game of cricket and was therefore granted access after World War I into the prestigious, renowned, and exclusive whites only GCC (Georgetown Cricket Club) in British Guiana. He was the first non-white admitted into the club in its long history and as a result, the entire country celebrated with events held on his behalf throughout the capital.

In those times, such a momentous event as opening the white’s only club to a non-white native born Guianese was seen by all colonial subjects of color as a major and celebratory step forward towards racial equality and ultimate independence. The premier cricket clubs in British Guiana and the West Indies had for more than a century been exclusively reserved for whites. Menzies therefore enjoyed the best of both worlds. To the natives, he was one of theirs, a local hero. To the English and other whites he was almost like one of theirs too. This local hero status stayed with Menzies until he died in 1965. However, he lost his youthful affinity for the English as he actively campaigned after WWI to integrate cricket in Guyana and the West Indies, and further, to win political independence from England. 

Menzies did not go too far as a player but he subsequently devoted his entire life to the game of cricket and its development in the West Indies. He became a very active administrator and manager at the prestigious Georgetown Cricket Club. He also quickly became the sole curator for the famous Bourda cricket ground in Georgetown where the GCC played and the site of so many first class and Test matches in its rich history. Under his stewardship, Bourda soon acquired the reputation as being one of the finest pitches and cricketing venues in the world. He was also a renowned  umpire and officiated numerous club matches, inter county matches in British Guiana, several first class inter Caribbean matches, and the one, ill-fated, and infamous Test match at the grounds in 1954.

Menzies was the lead instructor for the British Guiana Umpires Association for most of his life. After World War 1, he demonstrated an exceptional temerity as a colonial umpire and communicated extensively with the feared English gods and authorities of cricket at the MCC and the ICC in order to change and improve the rules of the game. The renowned Guyanese press writer and cricket fan Pryor Jonas, writing in an article in the July 18^th 1993 Guyana Sunday Chronicle, decades after his death, recounted how Badge was directly responsible for changing and improving the laws of the game. Menzies also became highly involved in player selection, recruitment, and development in Guyana. He remained a senior member of the GCC for his entire life, the Bourda site administrator and grounds curator, and played his other roles in Guyana and West Indian cricket for close to forty years and until he died in December, 1965. His entire life was devoted to the beautiful game of cricket.

With his intense devotion to cricket, Badge studied everything he could about the game, from the rules required for umpiring, the game’s rich and storied history, the fine and valuable art of laying a pitch, and most importantly, managing the spectacle of a major match in all of its aspects. In the art of curatorship, pitch laying, and preparing a field and a venue, he was regarded in the West Indies and beyond as the very best in the sport. Cricketers from all over the world loved gathering and playing games at Bourda. It soon became the most prestigious venue in the Caribbean and the center of Caribbean life for major inter-Caribbean and test matches. Badge Menzies quickly became known as the grand stage master for this mysterious and compelling international spectacle of test cricket when it was played at Bourda for over thirty years. He had a special love for the game of cricket and he shared that love with all the people.

From the GCC and Guyana, his reputation for his many talents grew and the people of Trinidad and Tobago recruited him to replace the matting pitch at the famous Queens Park Oval grounds in Trinidad. He umpired numerous games at the Bourda including major inter Caribbean matches. In his popular 1954 book, “Cricket Cauldron: With Hutton in the Caribbean,” the renowned English writer Alex Bannister chronicles how umpiring controversies led to the selection of Menzies as the umpire for the Georgetown match and that there were no specific complaints or issues with his umpiring amongst the players or the press before or after the infamous test match. For his multi award winning and voluminous 2021 book, “Who Only Cricket Know: Hutton’s Men in the West Indies 1953/54,” the renowned cricket writer David Woodhouse quotes the Trinidadian Guardian who referred to Badge at the time as “the miracle man responsible for Bourda’s turf wicket.” Woodhouse also documents how Badge had a great reputation as an umpire amongst the English players and how he was specifically selected by Len Hutton to replace the pre-selected umpires. No individual in cricket, player, writer, or commentator has ever claimed that Menzies, specifically, was known to, or ever made a wrong call or decision in the 1954 test match, or in the first class and many other matches he umpired at Bourda during his lifetime. The English cricket historians treat the ill-fated test match as one where a mere grounds man was made into a test umpire and this directly contributed to the riot. This is misleading and erroneous. Menzies was a renowned and trusted umpire who, given the umpiring controversies of the previous matches, was the best qualified selection by the English captain Len Hutton, and the West Indian captain Stollmeyer. The West Indian public and all of its cricketers also knew him well from his many years of umpiring at Bourda.     

Badge was also called in to supervise, rebuild, and advise at other grounds too.  Over his lifetime he also became very popular amongst all world cricketers especially when they gathered to play games at the beautiful Bourda Grounds. As the site’s administrator and manager he would arrange and cater to all the players’ needs whilst they were at the grounds. His staff catered for refreshment, food, and arranged for social gatherings. His many famous contemporaries and legendary names in the cricketing world would get together over drinks of rum and games of cards and dominos in the players pavilion. Players often stayed at his residences close to the famous grounds. A cricket test match lasting up to five days was much more than an athletic competition. It was a major social and cultural event, a unique social spectacle of sorts where Bourda became the undivided center of all life and national attention in British Guiana. Menzies developed very close relationships with most legendary players of Guiana and the West Indies. These included Headley, Constantine, Worrell, Weekes, and Walcott, and then, Sobers, Kanhai, Butcher, and the rest. He was also friends and cricketing peers with the famous English and Australian players of his time up through 1965, from Benaud, to Harvey, May, Compton,  Trueman, and the many others. As late as April, 1965, eight months before his death, the Australian Canberra Times reported how “the famous curator” was recalled by the Guyanese authorities to prepare the pitch for the Test Match at Bourda after complaints by the touring Australians. Cricket was a gentlemen’s club game, a game of camaraderie, sportsmanship, and comity. Badge Menzies ran the famous GCC club at Bourda for most of his life. Entertaining others with the game of cricket was the center of his life.

His son, Leon Edmund Menzies, now 87 and living in Ontario, Canada, recalls his father’s life in cricket very fondly. “I was a water and refreshment boy and assistant at the Grounds for almost two decades before leaving to join the RAF. I really grew up on the Gounds. I saw so much and served so many great cricketers. His greatest achievement, I think, was working with Clyde Walcott and Robert Christiani to recruit and develop three young famous talents from Port Mourant Village in Berbice, British Guiana. These were Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, and Joe Solomon. He put up all three of them at one of his homes in Georgetown and had them start playing at the GCC.  He was very proud of that!” This was the early 1950’s and Badge was determined in his goal of opening up GCC to native non-white talent. His grandson, Dean Menzies, now 71 and living in Florida, also fondly recalls his  experiences of accompanying him while he rolled the pitch at Bourda for matches. “I loved going to the refreshment stand and confectionery store afterwards and getting almost anything I wanted!” The Badge Menzies Grounds Man of the Year award was established and named in his honor in Guyana.

The dual hero status for Menzies eroded over time as British Guiana and the other English colonies of the West Indies agitated and started to struggle openly against English rule. Menzies had to choose sides and became overtly anti English and pro-independence in his politics. This was the context for the ill-fated test match between England and the West Indies at Bourda in 1954. The country was in a historic and severe political crisis. Churchill had just suspended the new Guiana constitution in October 1953 and cracked down severely on the nationalist party and the movement towards independence for Guiana. The move has been described by some historians as an “imperial coup.” The leader of the elected government and Guyanese nationalist party and his wife were arrested and imprisoned. A British warship was dispatched and British troops were ferried in and occupied key places. The local British Governor ruled under emergency powers. That emergency rule lasted for three years. All political meetings were banned. There was tremendous political tension and intense anti-English sentiment in the air when the match occurred. As a result, it became one of the most infamous matches in the long history of Test cricket. Menzies gave a critical run out to a West Indian batsman, a decision he later defended as fair and legitimate. However, it was like pouring gasoline on a fire. The crowd, fueled by alcohol and the boiling anti-English political sentiments, rioted and erupted in violence. Policemen on horseback were called unto the grounds to quell and control the crowd and protect Menzies from their fury. He remained under police protection for days afterwards and never  umpired  another test match.

 The incident was covered by the English and Australian press and received the close attention of the British Government and further complicated the movement towards Guiana’s independence. For the British government it was much more than a riot at a Test match. It was portrayed more as a moment of unacceptable political unrest in a very troubled colony. Emergency rule was justified and stayed in place. Independence for British Guiana was delayed as a result and came years after Trinidad and Jamaica obtained theirs. Historians now know that by the time of the test match, British Guiana had already become a hotbed of conflict, covert operations, destabilization measures, and an object of intense geopolitical competition in the Cold War between America and the former Soviet Union and Cuba. As Sir Clyde Walcott, the famous Barbadian cricketer who immigrated to British Guiana in 1954 to play and develop cricket noted in his book, “Sixty Years On The Backfoot,” the British and the American governments were already by then referring to Guyana as a dangerous communist bastion. As a result, Guyana’s politics soon descended into a low level civil war before its independence was ultimately granted in May, 1966. The Empire’s game of cricket had become intertwined with the Cold War in one of its colonies in the very last stages of the Empire’s dissolution.

Badge Menzies was born into the British Empire and its beautiful game of cricket. The game was like a platform for imperial display and evolved more as a cultural spectacle showing the Empire’s reach and reminding everyone of its rule. Badge was equally participant and equally divided between two worlds, the world of the white elites, and the world of the colored colonial subjects. It was a world governed by the Empire’s strict rules regarding race, color, and nationality. The Empire crumbled during his lifetime and new frictions, conflicts, and heated antagonisms quickly replaced the old ones. His undying love for the game of cricket prevailed through it all, the fall of an Empire, the collapse of race and color lines, and the imminent and troubled birth of a new nation. His love of the spectacle was shared by one and all in Guiana during his lifetime. The people of Guiana and the West Indies quickly forgave him for his infamous run out call. He was a native son, a true cricketing hero, a fair umpire who did the right thing but was caught up in the great historical struggles of his time. They knew that he had kept his politics from influencing his umpiring. He was true to the game that he loved. They quickly loved him again.

Badge joined the Georgetown Cricket Club after WWI and it sparked celebrations. He remained a member until he died in December, 1965. The club was his life. The Bourda grounds were his home, the center of his world. He was the stage master at Bourda, a grand entertainer within the Empire and the colony’s beloved producer of its central and favorite play. Everyone knew that when they entered Bourda, they were entering Badge’s world, a stage set by him for the spectacle to unfold. And the spectacle gripped us all. We the people loved every moment of it. We sometimes lived merely for the spectacle. We delighted ourselves in the spectacle. But on that fateful day in 1954 at the grounds, history unfolded to the beat of its own march and Badge was swept up with the tidal currents. The great game of cricket, the favorite pastime of the British Empire, fused with the politics of the Cold War and played itself out upon the field that day, and ignited. The famous grounds not only lost its innocence. The modern nation of Guyana lost its innocence too. 

Many individuals in cricket and the press have honored and remembered Badge Menzies for his role in cricket since his passing in 1965. Writing in the April, 2006 edition of the magazine CricketStar, the famous Guyanese and West Indian player, the late Basil Butcher, invoked Badge’s name and referred to him as the “famous Badge” and the “guru.” Pryor Jonas, the renowned Guyanese writer and commentator on cricket once said, “When the history books of Guyana’s cricket will be written – and the time MUST come when they will be- the name ‘Badge’ Menzies will be an honored one.”   And finally, in commentary that well summarizes Badge’s life and his accomplishments, William Walcott and Percy E. Duncan, writing in the magazine, Indo Caribbean World, Walcott first pays a great tribute to Badge Menzies in a lengthy article and, as the man, “who spent or gave his life to the excellence of Bourda.” Percy Duncan follows up on Walcott’s article and asserts, “Bourda was Badge Menzies’ masterpiece. In British Guiana, we were given the impression that we were always behind. But when Test cricket came, Bourda proved we were out front. Sempre Avanti!”  The “miracle man of Bourda,” as the Trinidadian Guardian referred to him and his grounds, was the pride of the colony of British Guiana. Sir Clyde Walcott, in his book “Sixty Years On The Back Foot” decried how poor and daunting the general conditions were in British Guiana to develop cricket and how the legendary Bourda Grounds became his “new home.” For several decades the famous grounds was the center stage of the nation’s life and entertainment and the platform for the greatest sports and national heroes of Guyana and the West Indies. It remains truly one of legendary and storied cricket venues and grounds in the world. It was formed during the height of the British Empire and survived the dissolution of that empire and the troubled birth of a new nation.

We may have to wait a few more decades to know the complete historical truth of what happened that infamous day at the Bourda Grounds in Georgetown, British Guiana, in February, 1954. Guyana remains the only country in the world for which the US intelligence agencies still maintain secret and highly classified files as to what exactly the US was doing in the country in 1953/54. Historians have still been able to uncover quite a lot. In his 2005 book, “U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, A Cold War Story,”   Professor of History, Stephen Rabe, describes how the massive covert operations by the US government to destabilize British Guiana started in 1953, immediately before the Test Match. A full scale US Cold War clandestine operation in the Western Hemisphere, similar to the one later directed at Cuba, was launched in British Guiana.  The democratically elected Guyanese nationalist leader, Dr. Cheddi Jagan and his wife were imprisoned, and all political meetings were banned. British Guiana was fully caught up in the Cold War. The country was being deliberately destabilized by England, the colonial power, and the United States, the new global power engaged in a Hobbesian like power struggle with the former Soviet Union.

Given the magnitude and national significance of a Test Match at Bourda, and what such an event meant for the entire colony particularly during the greatest political crisis in its history, could the match have become the focus and target of such a destabilizing covert operation?  Did foreign intelligence operatives target the match as part of the campaign of subversion and destabilization? These are reasonable historical questions given what we know. The full answer ultimately lies within the secret and classified files of the US Government. Woodhouse describes in his book how the series was marred in the previous matches by umpiring controversies. This led to the English captain, Len Hutton, rejecting one of the pre-selected umpires assigned for the Georgetown Test match, and insisting that Badge be the umpire. Badge was well known to all. He had dedicated his life to studying and applying the rules of the game and was considered one of the very best umpires in Guyana and the West Indies. Everyone also understood the political context of the game and were all caught up in the acute political crisis and unrest.  Badge accepted the historic assignment. Everyone knew that he loved cricket above all and would follow the rules and be impartial. It was one of the most fateful decisions of his life. With one famous umpiring decision the Cold War intertwined and fused itself with cricket, the beautiful game of the British Empire, and his beloved Bourda lost its innocence. The modern nation of Guyana also lost its innocence. The nation still carries the scars from that time in its troubled History.

Edmund Neil Menzies died on December 1, 1965 as a result of being struck by an automobile while riding a scooter motorcycle. Neither the driver nor the vehicle was ever found. He died a few days later and six months before his beloved Guiana was granted independence from England. His death was announced in big bold headlines in the front page of the national newspapers along with historic photos of him umpiring at the ground, setting the field, or socializing with the great players.  The entire country of British Guiana went into mourning and many cricketers from Guyana and the West Indies attended his large funeral. One of the original cricketing heroes and elder statesmen of cricket in Guyana and the West Indies was laid to rest. He is mostly known in history as the umpire of an infamous test match that occurred at the Bourda Grounds, in Georgetown, Guyana in early 1954. But he was much more than that. He gave his entire life to cricket and its growth in Guyana and the West Indies. He also gave his life to the struggle for racial equality and for Guyana’s independence from the British Empire.

Leon Menzies, the son of Badge, was at the grounds that infamous day in February, 1954. He was a young seventeen year old and was serving refreshments as he had done for years. He still remembers the scene quite well. “One person threw a bottle and started everything. We never discovered who that person was. My father never spoke much about the incident after that.”

On that fateful and infamous day at the Bourda Grounds in Georgetown, British Guiana in February 1954, the life of this guru, this godfather of cricket in Guyana and the West Indies, intersected with the anti-colonial, national liberation movements sweeping through the colonial empires after the Second World War. Churchill’s Imperial Coup was the crushing reaction by the colonial power against that movement in British Guiana in late 1953. The Queen’s Government then fully collaborated with the destabilizing covert campaign of the new global hegemonic power, the United States, caught up in an existential struggle with the former Soviet Union in the dangerous Cold War. That great struggle was playing out on the wider global stage as it played out on the Bourda cricket field that day in British Guiana.

POSTSCRIPT

In the long and arduous march and ascent of history towards Freedom, historians will recount how this endless struggle for human rights intertwined itself with sports and athletic competition. The two, athletics and the struggle for human freedom, mixed and intertwined themselves in the arena, on the field, in the ring, on the track, on the courts, and most importantly, in the hearts and minds of the players, the gladiators, the rivals, the legendary warriors, and last but not least, with the great stage masters of the athletic show and spectacle. As Gandhi and his followers utilized English Law to gain freedom for India and its peoples after 400 years of colonial rule, these heroic men, Headley, Constantine, Roach, Worrell, and others, as colored subjects and second class citizens of the British Empire, played nobly within the rules of the beautiful game of cricket, the favorite sport and pastime of the colonial master, and gave the best measure of themselves to win recognition of their rights to equality and freedom. A true and genuine recognition of their equality required that they ultimately beat the English colonial masters at their own game, the Empire’s game of cricket. And they first achieved this legendary victory in February, 1930 on the fabled grounds of Bourda, Georgetown, British Guiana. It was upon this stage that the people of British Guiana and the West Indies, animated by their instinct and yearning for equality and freedom, watched and closely followed their heroes as they engaged the colonial master, not only in a sport and athletic competition, but in that greater struggle to be Free. For the peoples of the West Indies, the Bourda grounds must surely be considered hallowed ground. It is here that our greatest heroes emptied themselves in their lifelong struggle for recognition of their rights and their people’s ultimate liberation from an empire than spanned the globe. Yes, it is here at Bourda that they first defeated the mighty English at their own game and saw the first glimmers of the light of Freedom. It is here at Bourda that the people started to believe in themselves and their own Destiny. With that historic victory the spirit of the people of the West Indies was uplifted as never before. After centuries of occupation and rule by an alien power the first glimmers of light from that bright star of Freedom were seen shining through that long colonial night. The English colonies of the West Indies were lifting themselves upwards into Freedom and ultimate inclusion into the community of free nations.

Long live the spirit of Learie Constantine! Long live the spirit of George Headley! Long live the spirit of Clifford Roach! Theirs was the Spirit of Freedom animating itself in that great historical struggle for rights. This Spirit of Freedom manifested itself in their great and heroic victory against the mighty British Empire on the hallowed grounds of Bourda, in February 1930.

References and Bibliography

1) Pryor Jonas, “Badge Menzies: a great” Guyana Sunday Chronicle , July 18, 1993.

2) Basil Butcher, “Potential Pitfalls of Staging The World Cup-2007,” Cricketstar, FPE 4/06, Edited by Ray Sunkar

3) Pryor Jonas, “Who are cricket’s world champions?” Stabroek News, June, 1995

4)William Walcott, “Giving the badge of honor to one of Guyana’s own – Menzies’ gains extended beyond Bourda , beyond the boundary.” Indo Caribbean World, September 2, 1994

5) Percy E. Duncan, “Badge of honour well given to man who crafted Bourda.” Indo Caribbean World, Reader’s Responses, October 19, 1994.

6) Wikipedia, “Badge Menzies.”

7) Leon Menzies, “My Memories of Bourda” Live interviews with Leon Menzies, son of Badge Menzies Menzies. January, 2024.

8) The Lithgow Mercury, Monday, March 1, 1954, “It Definitely Isn’t Cricket.” The National Library of Australia.

9)David Woodhouse, “Who Only Cricket Know: Hutton’s Men in the West Indies 1953/54”, Fairfield Books, November 2021, Chapter 15, page 279.

10) Stephen G. Rabe, “U.S. Intervention in British Guiana. A Cold War Story. “ The University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

11) Clyde Walcott, “Sixty Years On The Backfoot,” The Guernsey Press, 1999.

12) Alex Bannister, “Cricket Cauldron: With Hutton in the Caribbean,” Stanley Paul, 1954.

13) The Test Pitch Will Be Livelier, “The Canberra Times,” Tuesday, 6 April, 1965 page 17.