Jamaica's cricketing relationship with Costa Rica as chronicled by historians

Wed, Jul 7, '21

The Gleaner covered the highlights of Costa Rican cricket in the 1930s. The newspaper’s cricket correspondent ‘Longfield’ was fascinated by the story of how Jamaicans had taken cricket to Costa Rica. Since then, cricket has continued in Costa Rica, perhaps most memorably the epic match against Panama in 1986 attended by President Oscar Arias, the hosting of the 3rd Central American Cricket Championships in 2009, and the long-awaited victory over Mexico in 2017.

The spiritual capital of Costa Rican cricket is Limón where Jamaicans building the Atlantic Coast railway started playing the sport from the mid-1870s. The heyday was during the 1920s and 1930s when there were as many as 46 teams competing in three leagues on the Atlantic coast. In the 1930s, there were cricket tours to Jamaica and reciprocal visits to Costa Rica, which included one of the all-time greats of the game, George Headley.

One source of frustration for historians, however, has been the absence of photographic records of cricket being played in Costa Rica before the Second World War. There is a team photo of one of the tours to Jamaica and an image by the German photographer Hans Wimmer which probably shows baseball being played rather than cricket.

Read more at the Jamaica Gleaner