From where I sit and write the next four days may see dreams dashed, or sent flying into victorious orbit with the same elegant dispatch displayed by Dwayne Bravo in the Windies' demolition of Pakistan in the quarter-finals of the ICC World T20 in Bangladesh. Marvels are made from hope, so I'm hoping that we'll have cleared the Sri Lankan semi-final hurdle and all now, you like me will be settling in front of a screen of whatever size for the final show–up or down.
Cricket, lovely cricket; what would we do without it? For the indifferent and uninitiated there's little to be said to explain the mysteries (beginning with two sets of three stumps with their two bails apiece placed 22 yards apart), absurdities, artistry, elegance, drama, emotion, violence, speed and intolerable slowness which are mere soupcons of a game which once waved the flag of imperialism and class elitism, yet which ironically introduced mass popular culture first at home and then abroad, where it shattered boundaries of race and class.
This may not be the space to deconstruct the creolisation of cricket, but in passing one can't help but note similar trajectories in anti-colonial and decolonisation movements (cultural, political and economic) and that elusive search for identity beyond the petty preoccupations of nationalism which have gridlocked the Caribbean, since it faltered at the hurdle of Federation in 1962.
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