The final innings

(First published in the T&T Guardian on October 16, 2024)

My favourite cricket team anywhere nowadays is the West Indies Women’s T20 squad aka the West Indies (w) … with a small “w”. The “real” West Indies team requires no such qualification since everybody knows when we talk about Caribbean cricket, we are referencing the West Indies (M).

It’s one of those things about “cricket lovers” that the West Indies dominated version of the sport ended on or about August 28, 1995, at The Oval in London. The West Indies (M) scored 692/8 and declared in their final innings.

There meanwhile appears no lasting impression, among this cohort of supporters, of the May 1976 encounter between the West Indies (w) led by Trini Louis Browne vs Australia (W) at Montego Bay in Jamaica. The first ever by a West Indies (w) team.

Much has since happened to render it unsurprising that “cricket lovers” would not have noted with much enthusiasm (if at all) the West Indies’ (w) face-saving win over Scotland on October 6 at the Cricket World Cup – the very day Faf du Plessis’ SLK beat Imran Tahir’s GAW at the CPL T20 final in Guyana.

Apart from the fact that CPL does not present country versus country contests, the mismatch between things “Caribbean” and “the West Indies” has more than once been noted here.

In this regard, I am again interested to know about the keenness with which the recently completed Clive Lloyd and Deryck Murray Caricom Report on “West Indies cricket” will be received when it reaches brutally disinterested ministerial desks in Port-au-Prince, Belmopan, Nassau, and Paramaribo.

The report follows last April’s Caricom Regional Cricket Conference held in T&T and hosted by PM Rowley. Since then, the region has again hosted a flag-waving Caribbean Premier League – “T-Twenny cricket,” to quote one commentator – everything “branded” for maximum returns. A six is no longer merely a six but now a mis-named “maximum” (since we know that more than six runs can be scored off a single ball … but who cares?)

This is not cricket for those who only know about cricket. It is a grand show not to be casually dismissed by “cricket lovers” who preferred Garry’s upturned collar and baggy pants and Wesley’s (Hall, of course) unbuttoned shirt and rolled up sleeves.

We have lived to hear Gavaskar and others declare the physical superiority of “the shorter game” that has brought greater athleticism, an expanded variety of shots, and an enhanced range between “slow” and “fast” bowling.

Today we also know that the statelessness of cricket teams in most instances defines at least the short-term financial viability of the game. It is here that national flags, and the people waving them, serve merely as props and extras - colourful backdrops for exciting, lucrative eyeballs and ears.

Quick, you patriotic types. Tell me which team won CPL 2024. Simple. Now, give me the date for the first game to be played by T&T in the 50 Over Super Cup. If you know the answer to the second question, do you have a national flag ready for flying?

Okay, so we are talking about 20 overs and not 50. T-Twenny as in the first financially viable, Caribbean country-based encounters in 2006. By June 11, 2008, and inspired by its success, convicted Antigua-based, US swindler Allen Stanford was landing a helicopter packed with what was supposed to be a handsome stash of cash at Lord’s cricket ground. That “cash” turned out to be fake $1 bills. Somebody quipped that the game of cricket had been purchased.

I recently retweeted a post in which someone was wondering whether, in a Texas prison, a cellmate has long grown tired of hearing about the time his now half-blind companion “owned” West Indies Cricket.

Such have been the undulating fortunes of a sport that will now appear in its truncated version in the 2028 Olympics – most likely minus a “West Indies” M or w team. Or could it be there will be a West Indies Olympic team?

Comrade Fazeer meanwhile appears doubtful that the CPL version can ride out its current term of dominance, not in a prison cell but against the limits of challenged bank accounts. In my case, I think “West Indies (M)” cricket’s final innings closed long ago, at the failing of CWI lights. Money will be made otherwise.

Maybe the lights will eventually come back on. Look around now and tell me what you see.