?Hugh Hen­der­son

His­to­ry in the mak­ing is al­ways in­ter­est­ing. Wit­ness­ing his­to­ry be­ing cre­at­ed is a priv­i­lege. In 1974, when we lived in Cana­da, I brought my wife and four chil­dren aged 6, 5, 4 and 1 to sit in front of the TV in an­tic­i­pa­tion that base­ball's Hank Aaron would break Babe Ruth's long held record of 714 home runs that evening. He did, even if my kids now could care less! Last Fri­day I per­suad­ed my wife to stop wa­ter­ing her plants for five min­utes to wit­ness Sachin Ten­dulkar score the 100th run of his 100th in­ter­na­tion­al cen­tu­ry and so achieve a feat that will nev­er be re­peat­ed in our life­time - Ricky Ponting be­ing the near­est with 71. She did watch but did not ex­act­ly wine down de place with ex­cite­ment. Well played Sachin, you have again done the crick­et world proud. What an in­cred­i­ble, amaz­ing and fan­tas­tic achieve­ment!

When one has achieved much at the high­est lev­el of one's pro­fes­sion and has ac­cept­ed the on­go­ing praise of in­ter­na­tion­al dig­ni­taries and crick­et fans world wide with gen­uine class, dig­ni­ty and hu­mil­i­ty, we know we are deal­ing with a very spe­cial per­son. Few per­son­i­fy such an ap­proach to suc­cess bet­ter than In­dia's bril­liant bats­man Rahul Dravid who an­nounced his re­tire­ment from Test crick­et last week af­ter a stel­lar ca­reer of 16 years with a Test record sec­ond on­ly to his friend and col­league, Sachin Ten­dulkar. It was a plea­sure, though nos­tal­gic, watch­ing ex­cerpts of Dravid's me­dia con­fer­ence, ap­pre­ci­at­ing his per­son­al pride at rep­re­sent­ing his coun­try with such dis­tinc­tion while open­ly ad­mit­ting to the fail­ures along the way. Dravid was not known as "The Wall" for wrong rea­sons-his de­fense of his wick­et was more rock sol­id than most of the lead­ing bats­men, but what stood out even more, was his calm ap­proach, un­flap­pable de­meanor, courage, fight, and gen­er­ous sports­man­ship – all very ob­vi­ous in com­pil­ing his 36 Test cen­turies and over 13,000 Test runs.

We could write ex­act­ly the same about Ten­dulkar to whom the mod­est Dravid was al­ways con­tent to be the prover­bial brides­maid with nev­er a hint of en­vy but al­ways with glow­ing ad­mi­ra­tion. I feel priv­i­leged to have seen Dravid bat many times on TV, not on­ly for his run scor­ing but the way he demon­strat­ed the im­por­tance of play­ing the game in the right spir­it. He came across as a gen­tle man and a gen­tle­man who had the gift of choos­ing the cor­rect words and the right tone of voice in pre­sent­ing an opin­ion or an­swer­ing a ques­tion.

His bat­ting re­flect­ed a sim­i­lar low pro­file and ex­em­plary cor­rect­ness. We thank Rahul Dravid for al­low­ing the crick­et­ing world to share his su­perb ca­reer. We will sore­ly miss his rare tal­ent.

Con­grats Sir Viv

Be­lat­ed con­grats to Sir Vi­vian Richards on his 60th birth­day on March 7. Time sure flies when I re­mem­ber watch­ing Sir Viv bat "just the oth­er day" and al­so re­al­ize that all the Wes Hall League boys whom I knew as teenagers are now grand­par­ents and near or over 60 years old. Life goes on!

De­nesh must cope with dis­ap­point­ment

I was dis­ap­point­ed be­yond words when De­nesh Ramdin broke a fin­ger in St.Vin­cent and had to cry off the West In­dies Test team where he was vice-cap­tain. Al­most from Day One of his ca­reer when he was a teenag­er, I have tak­en a spe­cial in­ter­est in his progress and have many times praised his wick­et keep­ing skills, his bat­ting po­ten­tial / abil­i­ty and his lead­er­ship qual­i­ties. It seemed a dou­ble vic­to­ry when he was re­called to the Test team and then made vice cap­tain and I felt that if the se­lec­tors were di­vine­ly in­spired he would soon be ap­point­ed cap­tain, re­plac­ing the St Lu­cia skip­per. How­ev­er, the uni­verse un­folds as it is meant to do, and De­nesh will have to cope with his dis­ap­point­ment and frus­tra­tion in a pos­i­tive man­ner. I am con­fi­dent he has the nec­es­sary back­bone and char­ac­ter to face the chal­lenge.

La­dy Luck plays a part in all our lives, and when De­nesh Ramdin had to at­tend the train­ing camp in St,Vin­cent, it gave a well de­served op­por­tu­ni­ty for Gibran Mo­hammed to take Ramdin's place be­hind the stumps for the T&T na­tion­al team to play Ja­maica. Some peo­ple just hap­pen to be born at the wrong time, so to speak, and for years Gibran has been a very un­lucky crick­eter hav­ing to play sec­ond fid­dle to Ramdin when his at­trac­tive left-hand bat­ting and ex­cel­lent keep­ing skills would have al­lowed him to walk in­to oth­er na­tion­al teams in the past. Now with Ramdin's bro­ken fin­ger, he may get fur­ther chances to show the fans his true worth. Good luck Gibran.

Men­tal tor­ture

Painful or pa­thet­ic – take your pick! Along with about 200 oth­ers at the Oval last Mon­day, I suf­fered every imag­in­able form of men­tal tor­ture watch­ing our na­tion­al team lose to Ja­maica by 192 runs with a sec­ond in­nings per­for­mance I hope will nev­er be re­peat­ed. I re­mem­ber on­ly four strokes in the in­nings of 112 runs-a pull over square leg for six by Guillen; a glo­ri­ous cov­er dri­ve by Im­ran Khan and two beau­ti­ful off dri­ves by Bar­clay and Sher­win Gan­ga. It was a shame­ful team per­for­mance which did not speak well for the coach and man­ag­er giv­en the equal­ly in­ept dis­play in the first in­nings.

I have of­ten ques­tioned the val­ue of the per­pet­u­al team meet­ings and train­ing camps and hav­ing ar­rived last week at the Oval at 8.40 am, was in­trigued to watch the team "prac­tice" be­fore their sec­ond in­nings start­ed at 9.30 am jog­ging and play­ing foot­ball up to 9.15 am be­fore go­ing to their dress­ing room. On­ly three play­ers bat­ted a few balls for less than five min­utes yet the on­ly task each play­er had to per­form all day was bat! Tell me if I am crazy to think they should have fo­cused on bat­ting and not foot­ball. I asked Bryan Davis his views on foot­ball now be­com­ing an in­te­gral part of each prac­tice ses­sion and I would not term his re­ply "pos­i­tive." His views on the bat­ting stance of to­day's crick­eters with their bats off the ground (some point­ing to gul­ly) as the bowler ap­proach­es, were al­so in­ter­est­ing but I have no space to dis­cuss in de­tail. Bryan knows more about the game of crick­et than any­one else I know and his crick­et columns in the Catholic News are al­ways in­ter­est­ing and ed­u­ca­tion­al.

Af­ter the T&T de­ba­cle, it was good next morn­ing to watch Vi­rat Kohli (108) and Gau­tam Gam­bir (100) show what bat­ting is all about with a fine part­ner­ship of 205 in the Asia Cup, and there was al­most un­con­trol­lable ex­cite­ment in the crowd as Bangladesh (293-5) beat In­dia (289-5) in Fri­day's dra­ma filled Asia Cup ODI – their first ODI win over In­dia since 2007 World Cup. Tamim Iqbal led the way with 70, his 21st ODI fifty. The un­for­tu­nate as­pect of the match was that it spoilt the cel­e­bra­tion of Ten­dulkar's 100th in­ter­na­tion­al cen­tu­ry. Such is life! I wish our West In­dies team best of luck in the ODIs against Aus­tralia, since I do not view this Aussie team as any "great shakes". They are beat­able but will WI beat them­selves? I look for­ward to the progress of left – han­ders, Kieron Pow­ell and Dar­ren Bra­vo.

Fourth world coun­try?

Let me end by ex­press­ing the view that while sport is vi­tal in our so­ci­ety, the rub­bish spout­ed by union lead­ers in the TCL strike – not to men­tion the Ne­an­derthal be­hav­iour we have to watch on TV – and the non­sense / ig­no­rance con­cern­ing the To­ba­go Min­is­ter's cred­it card, puts any sport­ing news in the back­ground from a na­tion­al point of view I tru­ly be­lieve we are a fourth world coun­try if that is what we call re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship.

Af­ter 50 years as a Re­pub­lic have we ma­tured in our pub­lic be­hav­iour and re­spect for the rights of oth­ers?

Do we have any ma­jor / im­por­tant / mean­ing­ful laws which are ac­tu­al­ly obeyed? More to the point, does any­one care? God bless our na­tion PLEASE!