Yasir Arafat just took a beautiful catch off one of the South Africans. I couldn’t tell you which South African, as the stand I’m sitting in here at the Sir Frank Worrell Memorial ground is right next to the venue’s sole scoreboard, and the pitch is too far away for me to read the names on the back of the batsmen’s lizard green shirts. In fact, the only reason I’m able to identify Arafat as the catcher is that he’s the boundary fielder just in front of our stand, and well — that name. If I lean forward, squint and angle my head just so, I can just about see the top few lines of the scoreboard, among which, thankfully, is the total (195/9 at the moment). Of the four Cricket World Cup warm-up matches being played today in various parts of the Caribbean, this is also the only one for which Cricinfo isn’t carrying live scores.
The scores are coming through load and clear, of course, for what is turning out to be the lamest match of the lot: West Indies v. India, taking place now in Trelwany on Jamaica’s north coast. The West Indies are 85/9 after only 25 overs (for those of you who don’t know cricket, this means we might as well say congratulations to the Indians and head back to the team hotel). “They should give the people they money back!” says a man listening to the broadcast on his cell phone. “Imagine,” says another, “the host team, collapsing like that in the last match before the tournament start.” They steups* in unison.
But the scene here in Trinidad is generally festive. Apart from the Asian couple in the row behind us, whom I suspect are Indian nationals (he’s wearing an India replica shirt, and the tentative manner in which they picked their way to their seats a couple hours earlier suggested they weren’t locals), nobody here probably cares too much about the outcome of the match. Like me, they’re probably just happy to be out here on a Friday afternoon, on the kind of breezy, slightly hazy day that Relator probably had in mind when he wrote the lines “A lovely day for cricket/Blue skies and gentle breeze. . . .” But that calypso, of course (whose title is “Gavaskar“) commemorates another of the West Indies misadventures against India on Caribbean soil (in 1971, to be exact), so maybe we don’t want to think about it.
The Sir Frank Worrell Memorial ground is a neat little facility on the edge of the University of the West Indies campus in Trinidad. It’s clearly a work in progress. The area beyond the cricket pitch is still bare earth, but at least they’ve done us the courtesy of covering it with black flannel to keep down the dust. The covers on the bleachers are party tents bound together with duct tape, which is not to say, either, that they don’t do the job. The media centre — almost empty today — looks bright and well-appointed. One of the Sir Frank Worrell Memorial’s ground best features isn’t on the ground at all: the backdrop of the northern range, grayish-green today in the light haze.
As we arrived this morning, there were scores of megaphone-toting volunteers directing the parking and announcing the infamous regulations (no plastic bottles etc) in cheery tones. And then again at the gates, directing women with bags to one line, men without bags to another, and offering plastic baskets for us to put our cell phones and keys and loose change. The security check was cursory, but then, this is a tame, non-partisan crowd comprising mainly locals, arriving at a ground that holds 3,000. I wonder how smoothly things will run at Kensington (30,000), Sabina Park (27,000) the Oval (25,000).
The team is on lunch now, and so are we. The air around me is filled with the aroma of KFC and beer. The deejay in the area I now realise is the party stand is jamming this year’s road march, though the only people who seem to be hearing the music are two exhibitionists wearing fancy Indian headdresses jumping around near the boundary fence.
But the umpires are walking back on to the pitch, followed by the South Africans, who look like they mean business, and the Pakistani batsmen Nazir and Hafeez (Cricinfo live scorecard’s finally working)**, bobbing and prancing and trying to convince us that they’re only limbering up, not trying to chase away the heebie-jeebies that any opening batsman in his right mind should be feeling at the prospect of facing the gigantic André Nel.
*“the act of sucking air past one’s teeth, creating a sound of disapproval (also: steupse, chups, cheeups”)
**[UPDATE: Actually the scorecard wasn't yet fully working when I first posted this, which is why I wrote earlier that the opening batsmen were Gul and Sami, who happen to be bowlers and probably wouldn't be allowed to open even for the West Indies. Apologies -- though it's really all Cricinfo's fault. Here's the final scorecard, by the way - congrats, Pakistan!]
Technorati Tags: cricket, cricket world cup, trinidad. caribbean, south africa. pakistan
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