Vin­ode Mam­chan

Test crick­et is alive and well and I make this com­ment based on the fact that over the last six months there have been some pos­i­tive move­ment by crick­eters across the world to keep the game rel­e­vant. I must con­grat­u­late both the Aus­tralian cap­tain Michael Clarke and his West In­di­an coun­ter­part Dar­ren Sam­my for the roles they played in cre­at­ing so much in­ter­est in a Test match that was af­fect­ed bad­ly by rain. Clarke made the bold de­c­la­ra­tion at 160 for eight, set­ting the West In­dies a vic­to­ry tar­get of 215 runs off 61 overs. Sam­my then pro­mot­ed him­self to num­ber three in the bat­ting line-up to chase down the vic­to­ry tar­get. He did not close up shop at the fall of both open­ers and flayed a 26-ball 30 runs. In the end, rain had the fi­nal say with West In­dies bat­ting on 53 for two. This kind of pos­i­tiv­i­ty will en­sure that the fu­ture of the longer ver­sion of the game is se­cure. With the very pop­u­lar T20 crick­et match­es tak­ing the crick­et­ing world by storm, it is said that on­ly the purest pre­fer the Test match­es. Well on the open­ing day of the Sec­ond Dig­i­cel Test at the Oval, 15,000 fans showed up and I don't think there are so many purists in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The fans are com­ing back to the Test crick­et be­cause the West In­dies crick­et team is per­form­ing well and once they con­tin­ue to be com­pet­i­tive, Test match­es will al­ways be alive in the re­gion.

Twen­ty-one years at the Oval with­out see­ing a ball bowled

With all the rain pelt­ing down at the Oval over the last Test match, and the weath­er mir­ror­ing what is ex­pe­ri­enced in Eng­land, hot tea or cof­fee would have been just what the doc­tor or­dered. Thank­ful­ly the guys in the Ger­ry Gomez Me­dia Cen­tre had Stephanie Con­nor on their side, as she made sure tea and cof­fee were al­ways avail­able for the boys. The af­fa­ble Con­nor has been serv­ing the me­dia for the past 21 years and has nev­er seen a ball bowled at a match. She has her set up on the first lev­el of the Ger­ry Gomez Cen­tre and this sits di­rect­ly be­hind the sight screen hence there is no chance of putting a win­dow there for her to take a look at the crick­et.Ac­cord­ing to her, look­ing at the crick­et in not the im­por­tant thing, what is her main con­cern is tak­ing good care of me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers who come call­ing many times dur­ing the day. Con­nor has made a num­ber of friends dur­ing her tenure at the Press Box and has in­ter­act­ed with some of the top jour­nal­ists in the world. She has al­so had the good for­tune of meet­ing a num­ber of for­mer top play­ers, who are now me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers.

Con­nor is how­ev­er not too hap­py with her cur­rent set-up. She wants those in au­thor­i­ty to open up the space in the first floor so that the me­dia can sit and have their lunch in­stead of eat­ing over their lap­tops in the press work­ing area. She thinks this would be a great way for the me­dia to es­cape from be­hind the com­put­er for the en­tire day. Not see­ing a ball bowled for over two decades Con­nor is now ready to see what is hap­pen­ing on the oth­er side of the wall and she is now ask­ing of­fi­cials at the Oval or the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) to in­stall a tele­vi­sion in her floor, so she can see the game as well and when the me­dia is down­stairs they can al­so look at the game.

Rain leads to par­ty in the Con­crete Stand

The Tri­ni Posse Stand is known for hav­ing a great par­ty at the Oval but dur­ing the long rain de­lay on day four of the Test match, the Con­crete Stand came to life. Nor­mal­ly the talk in the Con­crete Stand cen­tres around crick­et but this time around the fans there walked with a dee­jay and dur­ing the rain break, they start­ed a great par­ty. The lo­cal fans were joined by those from 'Down Un­der' and they danced and pranced to the mu­sic blar­ing out so loud­ly that no­tice came from the Tri­ni Posse. The for­eign press­men were very in­ter­est­ed in the bac­cha­nal go­ing on next door and for­mer Aus­tralian fast bowler Nathan Brack­en could be seen sway­ing from side to side. Bar­ba­di­an com­men­ta­tor Bar­ry Wilkin­son passed by and said to me: "Vin every­thing you all par­ty for boy." Well this is the im­pres­sion the re­gion has of T&T. I prompt­ly re­spond­ed by say­ing that in some coun­tries of the world the spec­ta­tors would have sat down and looked grim just like the weath­er but not here. They would prob­a­bly got­ten vex if the crick­et start­ed back and the dee­jay could on­ly play at the end of each over.