On Sport: Cricket April 26
Twenty-two lost ambulance drivers assemble on the Savannah, but only until I notice that this is a cricket event. West Indians love to play the long game. Dressed in total white, like Wimbledon except with a little cap, the players spend a lot of time doing nothing, much like my beloved baseball. However, fans of the American pastime would be confounded by the baroque customs and rules, which are sanctimoniously called Laws. There are at least ten different ways to make an out, for instance, not that any of these occur very often. One game can last for days, virtually forever, like Her Majesty’s Empire. The ultimate victor emerges in gentlemanly fashion—through attrition.
Two bails rest atop three stumps, together called a wicket, on each end of the oval pitch. In front of the wickets stand two of the eleven players on the team trying to score runs. With a running start and awkward straight-arm bounce-throw, at velocities sometimes in excess of 90 mph, a bowler sends the sphere to a waiting batsman, who tries to protect the wicket by hitting the ball with his flat piece of wood, more like a golfing stroke than an American bat, and exchanging places with the other batsman. This counts for one run. One of many. Scores are complicated but reach double-digit points typical of a basketball game.
Fielders pursue the ball. If it is caught in the air, the batsman is out. If the ball strikes the wicket and dislodges the balanced bails before the racing batsman reaches the opposite wicket, he is out. If his struck ball reaches the outer boundary of the oval, he scores 4 runs. If he hits a fly ball over the boundary, he scores six runs, and gentlemen celebrate with gin and quinine tonics. The batsman may swing at a ball and miss, without penalty, as long the ball does not strike the wicket. The bowler is allowed only six pitches until he is declared out, and a new bowler replaces him from the field. After ten batsmen have had a chance to swing, one inning passes, and the other team goes on offense. Like baseball, this is a sport where defense has possession of the ball. When two innings have been completed, a winner emerges. If the game does not end after 5 days of play, the referee calls a draw, and each batsman chooses a cutlass or blunderbuss for the deciding duel.
Starting in the early 1900’s, Test Matches invited colonists to beat the Englishman at his own game, and cricket became a sensation abroad—in South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, East Asia, India, and the Caribbean islands. In 1975, the first Cricket World Cup was played, and the West Indies defeated England. It was momentous. The next time, they won it again. In 1983, at Lord’s Pitch in London, England failed to even reach the final match, and India upset the West Indians. In 1987, India hosted the fourth World Cup and won again. Pakistan beat India in 1999, during an actual nuclear standoff. The sport had become a vehicle of national prestige.
Americans, of course, could care less. In truth, so too could the vast majority of Trini’s. For most, the traditional game is too long, confusing, and plain boring. Meanwhile, the English are concerned that the sport is dying at home while it proliferates abroad. In 2005, a new form of the game was created to reduce the playing time to three hours, called Twenty Twenty, or simply T20. Gone were the gentlemen’s white outfits and caps. The old school may have hated it, but a new generation ate it up. In 2007, the Indian Premier T20 League launched a state-of-the-art, Bollywood-style spectacle, replete with cheerleaders, merchandizing, and star-studded entertainment. Other countries followed suit, albeit on a much smaller scale. The Indian T20 game has a fan-base of a billion people. The English game, on the other hand, continues to lose its best players to the East. The Queen disapproves, but she has not been happy for a long time.
The Queens Park Oval on Tragarete was built in 1896, ten years before the Red House and Whitehall, the seats of power. Back then England would send exhibition teams to teach her subjects about sportsmanship, but the colonists already knew how to hit things with sticks. The Windies, as our West Indies team is called, formed in the 1920’s and was mediocre before Independence, but this changed in the 1960’s when the team became Afro-Trini dominant. By the ’70’s and ’80’s, the WI Windies were the best team in the world, and this Oval regularly filled to its capacity of 20,000. However, those were the halcyon bygone days—before the coup, before the oil bust, before the fraying of the white fabric.
What happened in the ’90’s to sour the game?
“The child-run doh like it,“ replies the old fan. “Too slow. Now Dey got phones and football.“
The crowd is small tonight. On the Oval, the air is hot and still, large moths occupy the towering light beams. India is winning with 5 balls left. However, this Windies fan is directing his shouts and jeers away from the pitch and toward some young limin’ revelers atop the grandstand, as if the endless succession of runs being scored does not matter. To a Chutney soundtrack, the youngsters raise their beer cups to chant for India, the purportedly sexier team, and the the old-timer below is not amused, sort of like the Queen.