WISHART, Kenneth Leslie
D.O.B: November 28, 1908
Teams: British Guiana, West Indies
Kenny Wishart was a left-handed opening batsman who contested 16 first-class games between 1929 and 1947 including a solitary Test against the Englishmen at Bourda in 1935. On the local scene he turned out for the Georgetown Cricket Club and played his first inter-colonial match for British Guiana against Trinidad and Tobago at the Queen’s Park Oval in 1929.
In a match the visitors lost by 223 runs, Wishart’s contribution was 24 and seven, batting in the top order.
Many cricketing pundits are of the view that he should have been selected to represent the West Indies in 1930 when he was in good form but he had to wait for a further five years before he was chosen for the Georgetown Test of the 1935 West Indies-England series.
The English had won the first encounter in Barbados by four wickets and the regional team bounced back to take the second Test in Trinidad by a comfortable 217 runs.
In the third game in Guyana, England took first strike and compiled 226 with the West Indian speedsters George Hylton (4/27) and Manny Martindale (3/47) doing the damage.
The hosts then struggled against the leg-spin of Eric Hollies (7/50) to be bundled out for just 184 with Wishart opening the batting and constructing a composed top-score of 52 before he was run-out.
In fact when he was dismissed the score was 153 for four so the West Indies collapsed pitifully losing their last seven wickets for only 31 runs.
England declared their second innings closed at 160 for six, setting the hosts 203 for victory and when time ran out they were uncomfortably placed at 104 for five. Wishart fell leg-before-wicket to the medium-pace of the skipper Robert Wyatt without scoring.
The reason why he was not picked again was not due to his inability with the bat but primarily because of a policy at the time to choose a nucleus of six players for the Test team and then complete the eleven with others from the ‘home’ territory. 
Though his international career started and ended in 1935 when he was just aged 27, he continued to be engaged in first-class cricket intermittently for an additional 12 years.
Wishart’s performances on the field were overshadowed by his contributions off it for he was one of the leading cricket administrators in the West Indies for several years.
He was Guyana’s representative on the West Indies Cricket Board from 1949 until his retirement in 1972-a period of 23 years and for a brief period he served as secretary of the regional body.
At the time of his death in October 1972, he was the president of the Guyana Cricket Board and was virtually in charge of the prestigious Georgetown Cricket Club and its Test ground, Bourda.
A stand – The Kenny Wishart Stand – was constructed at the venue in his honour.
Aside from cricket, he became a leading personality in Guyanese business circles as he worked his way from being a junior clerk to Executive Director of the large Bookers conglomerate before his tenure ended.
TEST 1: RUNS 52: AVG 26.00: HS 52 vs England, Bourda, 1935.

(Digicel: Guyana’s Bigger, Better Network)