I was asked recently how I became interested in so many sports. Firstly, I had a father who was a top class all-rounder-cricket, football, tennis, hockey and athletics. Next, in my youth, we had none of today's many distractions-not even television-and did nothing but play a sport nearly every day often inventing our own versions, such as playing living room cricket with a ruler and a ping pong ball. Many Test matches were won and lost in our living room! Like some of our friends, my brothers and I grew up in a competitive sporting household which included playing most sports but also studying the history of the various sports. There was almost no excuse for "not knowing" or "forgetting" vital facts like identifying the Gloucestershire batsman who played in one Test for England versus Australia in 1948 and who reveled in the name Jack Crapp. Who were the two "Stanleys" who played for Blackpool in 1950? (Matthews and Mortensen)?
Who won the women's 100 metres in the 1948 Olympics in London? Fanny Blankers-Koen! Even if you could not yet read or write but could listen and speak yet did not absorb that Willie Watson and Denis Compton played both cricket and football for England, you were simply regarded as mentally challenged at least for that day. Not quite as bad as that but you had to be "sharp" as sports questions flew at you at the drop of a hat. In 1954 when England dropped Alec Bedser in favour of Frank Tyson, an English commentator announced that "an England team without Bedser was like an egg without salt," on the strength of which one of my younger brothers who was not a Bedser fan, immediately stopped adding salt to his egg and did so for months! Sport was serious business at home and as the eldest of the four boys I enjoyed major "knowledge" advantages. As a result, I like to think that through the years we all have been able to hold our own in sporting activities and conversations. We all remember the day brother Roger-about ten years old at the time-announced emphatically at the table that "the three worst words in the English language are RAIN NO PLAY!"
How many times we have quoted that famous statement I could not count but I thought of Roger very often during the recent West Indies/Sri Lanka Aquatic series, when rain dominated cricket like never before in my memory. Staying awake at ungodly hours only to see hundreds of local groundsboys pulling enormous tarpaulins to cover the pitch is not exactly amusing, and had Roger purchased a season ticket for the Test series, he would surely have gone out of his mind forever. Another of Roger's many well known sayings is "humour is a funny thing," explaining why one person thinks a joke worth a laugh while another does not. I must ask him if he was able to appreciate any "jokiness" while watching pouring rain night after night. Seriously, can you imagine the frustration of both sides over those 15 playing days? What a waste of money for two cricket Boards not exactly rolling in cash. I admit that one of my hobbies is not studying historic weather patterns in Sri Lanka-or anywhere else-but I wonder if this was a one in a million occurrence that no-one could reasonably predict, or is November a month of traditionally heavy rainfall when Sri Lanka cricket is always badly affected? Who plans/dictates the timing of these tours?
Congrats to Reggae Boyz
Congrats to Jamaica for winning the Digicel Caribbean Football Cup, and also to Guadeloupe for putting up a game show to finish runners up. However, it's a "thumbs down" for T&T who in my view were slow footed and even slower thinking. The game against Grenada was the worst I have watched for years, though the winning Grenada goal was quite brilliant. It is not for me to determine whether Latapy remains as coach or not, but if that squad is the best talent we have to offer the world, we are in bad shape. Imagine losing to Grenada! Looking at the T&T team play it is hard to believe that they ever watch matches from the English, Spanish or Italian leagues to see how the "beautiful game" should actually be played. After the 2010 World Cup I wrote suggesting that T&T should sink its funds preparing for the 2018 World Cup focusing on today's 16 and 17 year olds who would be in their prime in 2018 but no doubt we will spend billions trying to qualify for 2014 because we seem to have little idea what serious planning actually involves when it comes to timeframes-in sport or otherwise.
Several of us as teenagers in the 50's were coached for four sessions at QRC grounds by Jimmy Hill of Fulham and England and it is easy to remember him stressing speed, fitness, anticipation, accurate one-time passing, a wide visual appreciation of the entire field at all times and always running into open spaces, as the keys to winning games. Hill also emphasised that if you cannot kick "with both feet", you will never be more than an average player. How does each player on the national team or any local club stack up on those factors on a scale of one to ten-if in fact they are still seen as relevant? The one factor I would add to his criteria is a "lightning fast brain" which is a major difference between our team and the "big boys". So many of our footballers lack a sound education which puts them at a huge disadvantage when it comes to assessing a situation in a flash and choosing the best of several options. I wonder what Arsenal did to have Theo Walcott at 21 years old, playing his 150th game for the "Gunners" last week and scoring against the Serbian club in the UEFA Championship League. I remember seeing him in action when he was a mere seventeen. Don't we have even two seventeen year olds in T&T with half the talent of Walcott whom we can develop with careful preparation?
Serbia shocks tennis world
As one who follows tennis closely, it came as a big surprise to learn that Serbia had won this year's Davis Cup beating France- another example of a nation with very few resources beating all the "big guns". In years gone by it was a given that either Australia or USA would win the Davis Cup but maybe today too many young Americans are spoilt and live the soft life. What I find interesting is that Novak Djokovic, ranked number three in the world, is still only 22 years old even though he has been a top player since he was seventeen, which suggests that in a very short space of time, a small country can hang on to the name of one famous son and create an industry churning out a tsunami of accomplished players. Sweden did this with Bjorn Borg in the 70's. How come T&T cannot do something similar in any of our sports when we have had heroes like Hasely Crawford, Ato Boldon, Dwight Yorke, Russell Latapy, Stephen Ames, Brian Lara to idolize? Actually, I am convinced that Brian Lara did influence a generation of cricketers who bat left-handed like he did/does. When I was at school, if you happened to bat left-handed you were regarded as a freak – now that seems to apply to right-handers! Next week, God willing, we can discuss the Ashes in Australia and appreciate how other cricketing countries-not only West Indies- have their ups and downs over the years.