hugh hen­der­son

Near­ly every day this week I sat in the same chair and with­out mov­ing a mus­cle was able to watch World Cup crick­et in Sri Lan­ka; UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League foot­ball in Eng­land; golf in Dubai; track and field in Ger­many and horse rac­ing in USA, which for the kids of to­day is prob­a­bly noth­ing out of the or­di­nary. How­ev­er, when I re­flect on the sport­ing world in the 40s and 50s when I was a boy, such in­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion across the globe is ab­solute­ly mind-bog­gling. Iron­i­cal­ly, while I could watch Pol­ish pole-vaulters in Ger­many, I had to wait un­til our lo­cal evening TV news to learn what hap­pened in the T&T ver­sus Wind­wards crick­et match be­ing played in "far-off" St Vin­cent! So much for home news in the glob­al vil­lage!

In days gone by crick­et meant the Eng­lish coun­ty cham­pi­onship and Test match­es be­tween Eng­land and Aus­tralia, with oc­ca­sion­al se­ries in­volv­ing West In­dies, South Africa, New Zealand and In­dia.Pak­istan played its first Test in 1954 and coun­tries like Sri Lan­ka, Bangladesh and Zim­bab­we did not even have their present names. Re­gion­al­ly, Wind­wards and Lee­wards were an­swers to ques­tions in ge­og­ra­phy ex­ams. There was no TV to watch and one had to be a fa­nat­ic to cope with the sta­t­ic on ra­dio sta­tions over­seas.Ba­si­cal­ly, we had to wait for the dai­ly news­pa­per (none on pub­lic hol­i­days!) and hope we got the lat­est news. Amaz­ing­ly, we ac­cept­ed it with­out com­plaint and it seemed per­fect­ly nor­mal!

Foot­ball was Eng­land and Scot­land (plus Malvern, Maple, Colts and Notre Dame!) and lit­tle else though I was aware a cer­tain Puskas was a star who played for Hun­gary be­fore the Rus­sians in­vad­ed in 1956.Olympics took place every four years but meant lit­tle in terms of per­son­al­i­ties ex­cept for the great run­ner Emil Zatopek, and theoc­ca­sion­al "odd-ball" played golf in USA. There were a few im­por­tant names in ten­nis like Jack Kramer, Pan­cho Gon­za­les, Althea Gib­son and Mau­reen "Lit­tle Mo" Con­nol­ly but we knew them on­ly through news­pa­pers or a post­card that a friend may have sent dur­ing Wim­ble­don and ar­rived a month lat­er.

The Ep­som Der­by was the on­ly horse race in the world that mat­tered oth­er than the Clas­sics at the Sa­van­nah with Ja­maican and Ba­jan in­vaders chal­leng­ing our lo­cal best. We could not wait for East­er week­end and Box­ing Day-the high­lights of the rac­ing year.How the sports world has changed! In the dis­tant past, every crick­eter had a name like Smith, Jones, Brown and Green, so easy to pro­nounce and re­mem­ber. To­day, most sub-con­ti­nent crick­eters, African foot­ballers, Eu­ro­pean ath­letes and Russ­ian ten­nis play­ers have names con­tain­ing every let­ter in the al­pha­bet, and I am so glad my job is not to de­scribe a 60 yard dash at an in­ter­na­tion­al track meet and end up with my tongue tied in a reef knot!

In fair­ness, I well re­mem­ber a car­toon when I was at Uni­ver­si­ty and Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy was elect­ed. The car­toon showed two African chiefs cook­ing din­ner over a pot and one says to the oth­er: "John Kennedy.....what a fun­ny name!" I know how they felt!In my old age I find it dif­fi­cult to keep up with world sport. There are so many World Cups for men and women in every age-group in every sport be­ing played day af­ter day, I have to won­der if the sport fac­tor has dis­ap­peared and the mon­ey fac­tor reigns supreme.

In crick­et alone we have Test match­es, World Cups, IPL (In­di­an Pre­mier League), Four day first class games, ODIs and T-20s in every coun­try and now the crick­et sea­son is Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber. This World Cup bears lit­tle re­sem­blance to pre­vi­ous World Cups re­gard­ing rules and coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ing. Mon­ey talk is every­where even though play­ers com­plain of ex­ces­sive trav­el and lit­tle rest be­tween tour­na­ments.

James An­der­son (Eng­land bowler) plays a Test in Aus­tralia, hops on a plane to Eng­land to see his wife give birth to a ba­by and be­fore you know it he is back in Aus­tralia in time to bowl the next over-or so it seems! The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) spends count­less dol­lars on live-in camps to get the play­ers fit for World Cup and be­fore you say "boo", Adri­an Barath, Carl­ton Baugh and Dwayne Bra­vo are in­jured. Same sto­ry with oth­er teams.

Is the sport world sim­ply spin­ning too quick­ly to both­er with Haiti (earth­quake and floods); New Zealand (earth­quake); Bo­livia (land­slides) and Chile (an­oth­er quake)? Does the hu­man fac­tor no longer count?With this mind it would be such a gen­er­ous and thought­ful ges­ture if each of the 33 elite lo­cal crick­eters re­cent­ly named by Min­istry of Sport, were to do­nate $100 a month from their stipend to a wor­thy cause of their col­lec­tive choice to demon­strate their sen­si­tiv­i­ty and will­ing­ness to help the less for­tu­nate.

The an­nu­al do­na­tion of $39,600 will make a huge dif­fer­ence to some­one's health or ed­u­ca­tion but more im­por­tant, set an ex­am­ple to the rest of us who all too of­ten live life on­ly for our­selves and all-in­clu­sive fetes but choose not to sac­ri­fice for oth­ers.The ICC World Cup is in full swing and it has been a priv­i­lege to wit­ness the su­perb in­nings of Kevin O'Brien, AB De Vil­liers, An­drew Strauss, Kieron Pol­lard and Sachin Ten­dulkar plus the bowl­ing of Shahid Afri­di (Pak­istan), La­sith Ma­lin­ga (Sri Lan­ka) and Ke­mar Roach (West In­dies).

West In­dies have hu­mil­i­at­ed Nether­lands and Bangladesh and have raised our hopes once more for even bet­ter re­sults than ex­pect­ed. Up to now, O'Brien's mar­velous cen­tu­ry (113) in 50 balls for Ire­land to shock Eng­land, must take top spot for ex­cel­lence and breath tak­ing ex­cite­ment-it was a rare treat to watch!We must al­so con­grat­u­late our na­tion­al crick­et team for de­feat­ing Wind­ward Is­lands in an ex­cit­ing match in St Vin­cent last week, with skip­per Daren Gan­ga lead­ing the charge with a bril­liant 134. Younger broth­er Sher­win top­scored with 78 in the first in­nings and was sec­ond best with 31 (run out) in the sec­ond in­nings which in­di­cates that when he is al­lowed to bat in the top or­der and play his own game, his abil­i­ty is un­de­ni­able. Con­grats al­so to De­nesh Ramdin for his first in­nings knock of 53, Rayad Em­rit for yet an­oth­er good bowl­ing ef­fort and young Yan­nick Cari­ah in his de­but match, tak­ing three im­por­tant wick­ets.

The next match is against Lee­ward Is­lands at the Queen's Park Oval in St Clair which on pa­per should be easy pick­ings, but pa­per does not win match­es as we know on­ly too well.Let us hope that every­one en­joys Car­ni­val to­day and to­mor­row as it is meant to be en­joyed. I have de­cid­ed that this year, de­spite re­peat­ed re­quests, I will not "wine dong d' place" on the new Sa­van­nah stage but look for­ward to see­ing on TV the rest of you hav­ing a great time.