This should be my last cricket post, before I get back to the food. Unless somehow I end up in England for the Windies tour. Contributions of money and pressure on my bosses to give me the appropriate vacation leave will be gratefully accepted.

I made it to the Finals! Unexpected, but greatly appreciated. Yay. There’s much that can be said about the rain, and the rain, Adam Gilchrist, the actual match, the end-that-was-not-an-end and the ceremonial bits. I don’t want to get into that in detail; you can read reports like this one or this one.  Or read the updates Lilandra had posted on her blog, since she was the one sending me messages to keep me updated I don’t deny that Australia deserved to win but even so they deserved a better battle. And that has nothing to do with the mettle of the competition Sri Lanka. There were moments with Sri Lanka where it seemed entirely possible (including two 6′s that got me on tv!). Jayasuriya and Sangakkara had some great moments at bat, but too few to win.

In the end many of the highlights were Aussie. Like Mc Grath – another great ending his career. Very successful. Particularly against the other retiree Brian Lara. But Glen McGrath gets to retire on the highest note possible as a World Cup champion and Man of the Tournament! Adam Gilchrist made the fastest century in a World Cup final 100 off 72 balls. And Australia won the cup in the dark. Twice.

But being at Kensington Oval for the final was a tremendous experience. I got there early. Early enough to get rained on all the way down Fontabelle to get into the Oval. Passing the dancers, the scraggly homeless ticketless Aussie fans trying to get in. Seeing the oval fill up with eager excited people. There were large blocks of Aussies. Streams of yellow. Their support has been great and vociferous throughout this tournament. Complete domination of the party stand today – to the point where, even though I was the furthest point from them, I could make out the words clearly when they sang without music or speakers “I COME FROM A LAND DOWN UNDER…”

However…West Indians like the underdog. Plus, everyone in that oval – South Africans, Kiwis, West Indians, English, Indians, Pakistanis…all been beaten by Australia (well mostly) and all backed Sri Lanka (some in their own fan gear, some went out and bought Sri Lankan stuff). There were times when the whole Oval was chanting SRI LANKA!! Actually managed to overpower the Aussie support sometimes. I didn’t see as many Kiwis as I would have thought – didn’t the New Zealanders have hope that they could get into the finals?

The presentation ceremony as always was really for the tvs and the main stand where the VIPs are. But fortunately organisers had a show for the plebs. I understand most of this show was not broadcast once the Cup was handed over to the victorious Australians. The closing party was filled with twirling moving dancers and moko jumbies and panmen(and children) with the touches of Minshall as evidenced by the tall mobile figures in white with dreads. Performances by Allison Hinds and Rupee. Fireworks!

And leaving amid the masses wasn’t a nightmare. In fact, I think Barbados got the organisation right for the movement of people – whether through airports and seaports or in and out of the Oval. Fantastic achievement during the whole tournament – even at other grounds and one that deserved some appreciation from the ICC/CWC at the closing ceremony. But no go. Who likes to thank the public servants? We prefer to thank Mello. Sigh.

The refurbished Kensington Oval is beautiful. Holds upwards of 28,000 people with the addition of temporary stands. Called the CWC North and South Stands, they are made of metal adding an additional musical element to the oval atmosphere.Confused? Imagine thousands of people stomping on metal in unison. Ahhh. Scary the first time. But the stands held and everyone got to be part of the rhythm.

Pictures from Kensington Oval:

Australia vs Ireland: April 13 2007

Ireland vs Bangladesh: April 15 2007

West Indies vs England: April 21 2007

THE FINALS: Australia vs Sri Lanka – April 28 2007

I do have a food post in the works (more like in the mind!) but this is what has taken up some of my leisure and blog time. Cricket World Cup. I’ve now been to the refurbished Kensington Oval for 3 matches and was going to do a post similar to that on Guyana’s National Stadium at Providence. But then in the world of West Indies cricket or indeed world cricket, much has now been taken over by thoughts of the retirement of Brian Charles Lara from international cricket. Like the Manicou, my stint as a cricket follower is inextricably linked to BC Lara. When he burst onto the international scene was right about the time that I started paying attention to that thing that Dad always had on the radio on our long drive home from school (excruciatingly boring at the time to listen to stuffy Brit commentators describe a ball rolling across grass somewhere), or the game that dominated the one television station at unreasonable times. I didn’t start paying attention to cricket because of Lara, but it certainly helped that he was such a batting genius, a world class player who commanded international attention even before he broke those records. We had a star.

(For the record, I was already a fan and staying up late at nights during that Australia tour to see him in some of those remarkable innings when he scored the 277 and in the Oval on the next home tour when we got sold packs of nuts that were the Lara special because each brown bag had exactly 277 nuts – or so the Nutsman said!)

There are those who discount him because he is a star, not wanting to deal with celebrity in a sport arena (ha!), but coming from a small, twin-island nation, in the middle of a conglomerate of some even smaller island nations (and Guyana!) to be able to lay claim to the Prince of Port of Spain as one of ours cannot be discounted. Particularly since I have always had the feeling that I started this cricket thing when the Windies were clearly a team to be reckoned with, no matter what the status of the indivicual countries in other sports, or in economics or any other field of assessment. Unfortunately, I don’t think I saw the team continue along that path. Viv Richards retired. Greenidge and Haynes. Richardson. Ambrose and Walsh. It’s ok for players to retire, for eras to come to an end, but it seemed like as the years of my fandom continued, the status of the Windies just continued to sink. And no, I am not connecting it to myself. But I know there are a lot of you out there like me, who wonder why we couldn’t be fans of the team in its heyday. Why did we get sucked in on the eve of what seems like a decades-long decline? (And why we’re still here, but that’s the nature of support…)

But I am distracted. Back to my point. In the midst of all the decline we still had a star. Someone who was recognised the world over and in the cricketing world in particular ensured that no one ever discounted completely the West Indies team. Not as long as we had Lara on it. I am not unbiased in my view of Lara. I don’t know if he made a good captain. I don’t know if he was sufficiently disciplined or a team player. I do know that his retirement has ended without a doubt in my mind that last relic or vestige of hope we used to hang on to that Windies domination wasn’t so very far away again. Not just because he was great, but because when he was 19, when he started, he was playing with the greats, or in the fresh shadow of their departure when we still had that hope. I am not saying we can’t play well and win again. It’s just not going to be that easy to muster up the dream of the old days. The old days are definitely and definitively passed. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe whoever is in the team now will have to work in the knowledge that the West Indies have no automatic status or respect. We only have the opportunity to work hard, practise and desire the win. To some extent, it doesn’t matter who’s on the team. It doesn’t matter whether we have star power. Look at Ireland and Bangladesh.

Before I get depressed thinking about the fate of our team…back to Lara’s retirement (hmm…any less depressing?). Kensington Oval was packed. 22,500 people came to see Lara’s last match – West Indies vs England in the Super 8s of the CWC. Unfortunately, we didn’t win, but it was a nailbiting end and I can say I was there in the Oval for that historic match (not till the end unfortunately, but Lilandra and I were there among the 22,500 for most of it). There were signs from fans of all countries thanking Lara. When Chris Gayle got out, the entire Oval quickly reacted in unison to chant “We Want Lara”. The England team formed a guard of honour to welcome him onto the batting pitch for the last time. We didn’t get any fantastic display this innings, but as the crowd enthusiastically confirmed when he asked at the end, he certainly entertained us throughout his entire career.

Pictures from the match.

I am depressed and I will not post about the match yesterday. I’ll just talk about the stadium. The team doesn’t seem to want this, even though the fans here certainly did. This was the first sellout crowd of the tournament and Providence Stadium was packed with 12,200 people. 12,200 people and I had to be sitting right behind a group of Sri Lankan fans.

This was my first CWC match. I was impressed with the stadium. Great design so you get great views from anywhere in the stands. Even from the Grass Mound where we were (cheapest “seats” @ US $25). Tonnes of washroom facilities kept very very clean despite the throngs of people. I hope Barbados did just as good a job with Kensington, as I will be there for 3 more Super 8 matches. Pictures on my Flickr. More pictures at the end of this post.

Baby enjoyed herself. When we started walking into the stadium, she went silent and her eyes just grew. She could not believe we brought her to a place where she could see so very many people. At least she had fun – she doesn’t understand the game just yet. Ah, innocence. She had 2 naps in the middle of the madness.

I didn’t really explore the available food. With the price of concessions being a bit high there wasn’t the variety that I would expect from a West Indian cricket match. Oh for the Oval where you could get roti, shark and bake, soup, anything you want under the stands, freshly made right in front of you. I did buy a sno-cone with condensed milk! The sno-cone man was selling them with chocolate syrup as a topping! Chocolate syrup on a sno-cone??? Oh well, something new for the tourists

Of course, I should be asleep, preparing for the day ahead. A whole day at cricket can be quite tiring, especially on the mound. When we first started going to the Oval in Trinidad, it was always a last minute sort of thing (before we made it a habit) and we always got the cycling-track tickets. All the other seats were sold out for ODIs by the time we got them. Cycling track is interesting. And cheaper of course. My sister didn’t get her thriftiness out of the blue . But then again, try buying 5 covered stand tickets AND feeding 4 people at Oval prices (Dad wouldn’t buy anything for himself if he could help it) as well as buying at least one tour magazine, maybe 2 depending on how young and curmudgeonly we were – I suppose Dad did have legitimate cause for thrifitiness. But back to the cycling track.

You’re as close as can be to the match and you don’t have rows and rows of seats to fight through when you want to get something to eat. You see, you have to sit on the concrete sloping cycling track at the Queen’s Park Oval, which is at the bottom of the stands and goes around the ground. Go early, so you get a spot at the top of the track where you can lean back against the wall, and avoid the late in the day trickles of fallen and dubious liquids that run their way down to the bottom, never sparing a thought for people seated in their way (people get clumiser as the day goes by, and that last bottle of rum doesn’t stand as steadily as the first). Take a cushion. To sit on. A mat of some kind. Umbrellas for the sun that will hit you all day. From various angles. The umbrellas will come in handy when it rains. And it will, even if it’s only a drizzle. After all the Queen’s Park Oval has as its beautiful backdrop the Northern Range. Mountains pull in the rain clouds. And when it rains, well, rain water also travels down. So you have to stand up until the rain is over, and then wait till the concrete is dry enough to sit again. During this period you’ll finally fraternise with the people in the stands as you take shelter in their domain.

I know, it sounds rough, but when the inebriated fans run around the stands waving flags, singing, trying to get up a Mexican Wave, passing through groups of rival fans to pass on some picong, you’re in the middle of the action. If you choose a good spot, you might be on camera all day with boundaries hitting the ropes in front of you, or the ball bouncing in your midst. This is the perfect time to carry those cleverly worded homemade signs. Once as a student in Barbados, a group of us went to Kensington Oval for the Test against the touring India (the match when Chanderpaul scored his first Test century). We went early, stationed ourselves at the boundary rope (no cycling track to get in your way in the Kensington of old) and had our flags and signs. One in particular stated proudly that we were UWI students. “Hi Mom. Please send Money.” I believe one of our mothers saw that on tv in Jamaica or Trinidad, and may have said she was so glad it wasn’t her child that shamed her down like that on international tv. If she only knew. Sitting on the boundary during a cricket match is just an amazing experience with or without your 15 minutes of fame. You’ll clench your teeth a bit when your fellow West Indian women oooh and ahhh and try to flirt with the boundary fielder, who MUST be cute if he’s standing in front of them, but depending on how young you are, you run to get his autograph anyway.

My father was always a little stressed at the end of the day, when people were a bit less in control of themselves, and he had 4 children to take care of, but I don’t regret the cycling track experience. Sure, sitting in the stands is a bit more civilised and easier to pay attention to the nuances of the match, but I don’t know if I would have been as hooked on going to the Oval if I had started there. I hope the mound tomorrow at Providence is half as good. I am sure it’ll be twice as much sun, but this may be the hook for the niece. She’s already prepared, at 14 months, for the wave!

The photo on the right is my niece, wearing a Windies hat, and reading the newspaper, a pose that I am sure will be common throughout the ground tomorrow.

The photo at the beginning is from the first Test Match at the new Warner Park Stadium in St Kitts and Nevis, held in June 2006 against India. This is Chris Gayle as he makes 50 runs, on his way to 83.

Piarco Welcome

After we qualified for the World Cup (first time ever) by beating Bahrain 2:1 aggregate. Party in the streets followed their arrival, but I missed all that by a day.