Former Guyana youth cricket player gives back to home clubs

The old saying, ‘charity begins at home’ resonates well with Pooran Singh, who has made monetary donations to the Everest Cricket Club (ECC) and the Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) while visiting the country of his birth for the Easter season.

Singh, who represented the Guyana youth side in 1968 and 1969 as a wicketkeeper, now resides in the United Kingdom, and is aligned to the Savannah Charitable Trust, which is chaired by former English Test player Phil Edmonds.
When he made the donations on Wednesday to the respective clubs in the city, Singh said: “I told my chairman (Phil Edmonds) that I am going back home for a vacation, and immediately he encouraged me to make the donations to the two clubs that I was associated with as a young cricketer in Georgetown.”
On behalf of the Savannah Charitable Trust, Singh handed over G$100,000 to both Everest CC and Georgetown CC.
President of the Everest club, Manzoor Nadir, was on hand to receive the timely donation. Nadir, who is also the Honourable Speaker of the National Assembly of Guyana, thanked Singh for the second such contribution, and said the funds would go towards restoration of the club’s physical photography gallery.
“We need to preserve our club’s rich history, which is also captured in photographs; and, as such, we will use the Savannah Charitable Trust grant to standardise our frames and to bring the gallery to fruition,” Nadir told Singh.
Nadir also provided Singh with a report on the outcome of the previous donation, which was made in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The funds on that occasion were used to kick-start the extensive maintenance and physical upgrade works for the comfort of everyone here at Everest,” he explained.
Singh, who started his cricketing career as a youth at Everest, was pleased with the efforts of the president and executives of his foundational club, and thus also presented them with two boxes of Grade A cricket balls, to be used for matches and practice sessions.
At the GCC in Bourda, the donation was received by Timothy Tucker, president of the club, in the Members’ Pavilion. Tucker, who is also the President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), told Singh that the funds would go towards extension of the players’ dressing rooms and to rehabilitate the upper level of the Members’ Pavilion.
Both ECC and GCC continue to be used extensively for local matches at all levels. At the start of the year, both venues were used by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for the Under-19 Men’s Cricket World Cup matches.