An­dre Bap­tise

West In­dies crick­et has longed since been di­ag­nosed as a hell­ish game full of pain and an­guish. Just the sort of en­ter­tain­ment Mac­beth might en­gage in while ar­rang­ing to have Mac­duff's wife and ba­bies put to the sword. Crick­et some say is an io­dine game. When we were chil­dren, we plead­ed for any­thing oth­er than io­dine, but our par­ents found that io­dine bot­tle each time. They said the sting­ing was good for us. It showed they were get­ting out the poi­sons. As far as I am con­cerned, I had no poi­sons, so I al­ways thought my fa­ther was ly­ing to me for rea­sons of his own. Maybe he was just prepar­ing me to watch crick­et when I grew up. Thanks a lot, Dad. Sim­ply put, I was in the the Bri­an Charles Lara Pavil­ion yes­ter­day. Af­ter Sun­day, I had a pre­mo­ni­tion this was go­ing to be an­oth­er ex­cit­ing day. And when Ke­mar Roach had Matthew Wade dis­missed ear­ly in the pro­ceed­ings well caught at slip by young Dar­ren Bra­vo, the ex­perts were all chirp­ing away at what would hap­pen next. Let's just say, they were all wrong. Hussey set­tled and with the as­sis­tance of the short­est man on the field wick­et­keep­er Carl­ton Baugh bat­tled on luck­i­ly. He edged and was prompt­ly dropped. This was prov­ing to a Mon­day when re­grets came home to roost for West In­dies crick­et and De­nesh Ramdin's in­jury was hurt­ing.

When the rains came, one could hear a col­lec­tive sigh of re­lief, as many of the old stagers and for­mer crick­eters in the Pavil­ion stretch their legs in frus­tra­tion, as the West In­dies failed to dis­miss the tailen­ders. One el­der­ly gen­tle­man who found a seat next to me spoke for about 40 min­utes about the need for change. I was won­der­ing to what he was re­fer­ring when he quizzi­cal­ly said he was re­fer­ring to the fact that in West In­dies crick­et noth­ing changes. And that is when I made my po­lite ex­cus­es and left the Pavil­ion and head­ed back to the Tri­ni Posse Stand. With­in a minute of tak­ing my seat I had a sense that things could on­ly get bet­ter and so it did. Hussey played an aw­ful stroke af­ter an 89-run sev­enth wick­et part­ner­ship and de­part­ed. James Pat­tin­son, long vig­i­lant was caught and Roach wrapped things up bowl­ing Ben Hil­fen­haus and trap­ping Michael Beer. For Roach it was an­oth­er five wick­et haul, and for the West In­di­an sup­port­ers it was some great re­lief. What it meant was that the frag­ile West In­dies bat­ting had just over one hour to deal with some ea­ger Aus­tralian bowlers. And when Aussie cap­tain opt­ed to open the bowl­ing with the spin of Beer, most in the Tri­ni Posse were too busy re­cov­er­ing...re­cov­er­ing. But all of that changed when Braith­waite went with­out a run on the board. It took the West In­dies 32 balls to score their first run and this was greet­ed with great joy and cel­e­bra­tion.

But Beer fur­thered damp­ened West In­di­an hearts, when he had Adri­an Bharath pal­pa­bly out LBW for sev­en and sud­den­ly the Tri­ni Posse was pay­ing at­ten­tion to crick­et, as many ex­pe­ri­enced some large lumps in their throats. It did not get much bet­ter when Kier­an Pow­ell was giv­en out LBW to Pat­tin­son, de­spite re­plays show­ing the ball pitched out­side the legs­tump. Tragedy at 38-3. It is rare that the Tri­ni Posse faith­fuls get qui­et or pray, but I just sensed from clasped hands and ner­vous twitch­es that some of the joy which was un­fold­ing at 4 pm, was be­gin­ning to be­come mea­sured. From here on, it was all about ner­vous en­er­gy on the field and in all the stands. So I de­cid­ed to fin­ish the day as I start­ed in the Pavil­ion. Two for­mer crick­eters in­vit­ed me to sit next to them to bring "Good Luck". Giv­en that every­one was watch­ing me, now more than the crick­et it­self, I oblig­ed. Of course when bad light was even­tu­al­ly called, the West In­dies were 49-3, with Dar­ren Bra­vo on 16 not out and Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul on 1 not out. Did I bring good luck? To­day promis­es to be en­thralling. The two best West In­dies bats­men against the might of Aus­tralia. Let us hope as many per­sons as pos­si­ble will trav­el to the Oval. By the way, I will be in one of the Cor­po­rate Box­es to­day. I am not sure which one. It all de­pends on whether any in­vi­ta­tions come overnight. At the mo­ment, I have one.