Pe­ter Ray Blood

Bad weath­er, bad crick­et and bad be­hav­iour al­most ru­ined the tra­di­tion­al fun had by crick­et fans through the years in the Trini­posse Stand (TS) this week. Hun­dreds paid $600 for Sat­ur­day's 20/20 game be­tween In­dia and the West In­dies; and, $450 for two ODI games on Mon­day and Wednes­day for the all-in­clu­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and be­ing en­ter­tained by some of the coun­try's top artistes. Tor­ren­tial show­ers, af­ter WI lost Sat­ur­day's 20/20 en­counter against the ODI world champ, washed out the en­su­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go ver­sus High Per­for­mance Cen­tre (HPC) match, but that didn't stop the fun in TS, with many mi­grat­ing to neigh­bour­ing All Out Pub in the Queen's Park Oval un­til late that night.

On Sat­ur­day, TS was graced by the pres­ence of an army of lo­cal celebri­ties and re­gion­al stars, in­clud­ing Bri­an Lara, Sir Vi­vian Richards, Dwight Yorke, Sha­ka His­lop, Stern John, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bra­vo, Jerome Tay­lor, Rus­sel Lat­apy, John­ny Soong, Dane Dar­basie, Col­in Bor­de, Pe­ter Math­ews, and Kens­ing­ton Oval Par­ty Stand own­er Chetwin Stew­art. Al­so present were gov­ern­ment min­is­ters AG Anand Ram­lo­gan, Dr Tim Goop­iesingh, Roodal Mooni­lal, Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine, Ra­mona Ram­di­al, Anil Roberts, Glen Ra­moutars­ingh and Vas­ant Bharath.

Against the back­drop of the vi­va­cious Dig­i­cel and Carib Girls, danc­ing af­ter every over, bound­ary and wick­et tak­en by WI (not many), Trini­posse fans were en­ter­tained by Ben­jai. Mu­sic for the three days was by DJs Kern Cros­by and High Fi­deli­ty Less than Ze­ro. A sur­pris­ing­ly large crowd at­tend­ed Mon­day's first of five ODI match­es. The sun­ny weath­er was per­fect for crick­et but WI's game wasn't as the home team was trounced again, los­ing by four wick­ets. En­ter­tain­ment on Mon­day was sup­plied by the duo of An­tigua So­ca Monarch Tiann and Ja­maica's Kei­da, singing the newest crick­et an­them for team West In­dies; Adesh Sama­roo; and, bel­ly­dancer Nali­ni Akal.

An­oth­er large turnout was present on Wednes­day for the sec­ond ODI, an­tic­i­pat­ing a re­ver­sal of for­tunes for the WI, but that was not to be. Not even the Duck­worth Lewis for­mu­la or in­ter­mit­tent rain saved the Windies from a com­pre­hen­sive sev­en-wick­et thrash­ing. Mean­while, in the TS, fans were en­joy­ing much more than their mon­ey's worth as or­gan­is­ers ac­quired a wide range of prod­ucts from sup­pli­ers, in­clud­ing KFC, Cad­bury choco­late, Haa­gen Dazz ice-cream and Frito Lay Chips. Prod­ucts from Kiss Bak­ery, Tri­dent, Caribbean Kool Juice, Wendy's Frosty and Hol­i­day Foods; and, Carib and Stag, John­ny Walk­er Black, Ab­so­lut Vod­ka, Black La­bel Rum, wines, Sauza and Petrud Tequi­la, Jager­meis­ter, and Red Bull, the most var­ied treat of­fered in the Stand's his­to­ry.

They were al­so en­ter­tained by Iw­er George, whose pop­u­lar­i­ty seems to have in­creased since his sec­ond-plac­ing in this year's In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch fi­nal; Tiann and Kei­da; and, Akal. Re­fus­ing to oc­cu­py the sec­ond tier of the Stand, spec­ta­tors filled every space avail­able on the bot­tom deck, and re­fused to ac­cede to re­peat­ed re­quests by Fire Ser­vices per­son­nel to keep the aisles clear. This stub­born­ness forced the of­fi­cers to or­der a pre­ma­ture stop­page to the mu­sic and clo­sure of the bar.

Al­so go­ing against the rules of the Stand, about sit­ting on it rails, one ine­bri­at­ed spec­ta­tor ac­tu­al­ly fell over the rails, mirac­u­lous­ly es­cap­ing se­ri­ous in­jury. Wednes­day's be­hav­iour left a sour taste in the mouths of many and was an un­for­tu­nate cli­max to three days of crick­et­ing fun.

The Dig­i­cel In­dia-West In­dies tour re­sumes to­mor­row in An­tigua and one can on­ly hope that the Windies will put up a bet­ter show­ing than it did in Trinidad this week. With the year go­ing as quick­ly as it has been go­ing, it was bound to hap­pen. We've hard­ly re­cov­ered from Car­ni­val 2011; peo­ple are still re­pay­ing their bank loans for this year's Car­ni­val; and, al­ready one big mas band is launch­ing its C2K12 pre­sen­ta­tion this month-on June 18 to be ex­act.

The band is d Krewe, led by fa­mous King of Car­ni­val com­bat­ant Roland St George, and it's un­veil­ing Panache...Fol­low My White Plume, at The Cen­tu­ry Ball­room of the Queen's Park Oval. Just in case you might think I'm josh­ing, I have in­clud­ed the poster for the launch. I al­so heard it in the grapevine that Is­land­peo­ple Mas, Tribe and Spice are al­so un­veil­ing their C2K12 pre­sen­ta­tions in the not too dis­tant fu­ture. Won't sur­prise me if we'll be hear­ing Fe­liz Navi­dad quite soon on the air­waves. Ad­vanced tick­ets for Panache...Fol­low My White Plume are cur­rent­ly on sale atb the band's mas camp-87A Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook, from noon every day.

Shine on for Allyson

Tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Allyson Hen­nessy, who died last month, will be re­mem­bered in a spe­cial way on June 18 by her hus­band, sis­ters, fam­i­ly and friend when Shine On is staged at Pier 1, Ch­aguara­mas.

Hav­ing spent a month at St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre dur­ing her ill­ness, the fam­i­ly has been left with a moun­tain of med­ical bills to set­tle, and a num­ber of top artistes have vol­un­teered their tal­ents to this wor­thy cause. For in­stance, the con­cert fea­tures David Rud­der, Shad­ow, Black Stal­in, Roy Cape All Stars, Blaxx, 3Canal, Or­ange Sky, Im­ij & Co, Denyse Plum­mer and too many more to name.

Show­time is 7 pm and guests are asked to pay a con­tri­bu­tion of $200.

You can walk with cool­ers and food and drinks will be on sale.

Get well Wayne

To­day I send out best wish­es and a speedy re­cov­ery to my good friend and for­mer band­leader Wayne Berke­ley. The tal­ent­ed artist/de­sign­er, who suf­fered a stroke that paral­ysed his right side, had an­oth­er stroke about three weeks ago, this time on his re­main­ing 'good' side, the left. The one thing I know about Wayne, hav­ing over­come the de­bil­i­ta­tion of paral­y­sis be­fore, is that he's a fight­er, and shall, by the grace of God, al­so over­come this.

Tick­ets are cur­rent­ly avail­able at:

Veni Mang&ea­cute; Restau­rant, 67A Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook-624-4597

Unit­ed Colours of Ben­net­ton, Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James-622-8245

Meil­ing, Car­los Street, Wood­brook-627-6975

Hazel Wong Kang-681-0587

Sal­ly Hospedales-682-6338

Lor­raine O'Con­nor-678-4303

Judy O' Con­nor-762-7629

Shee­lagh Besson-680-9192

Ros­es Hezeki­ah-678-3966

Em­mett Hen­nessy-620-3352

Na­tal­ie Black-3545-5214

Raquel (Cayce) Chan­dler-620-7211

Richard Blaize-790 8688 (South).