?Hugh Hen­der­son

Poor me! I went to the Oval to watch Test crick­et but end­ed up giv­ing sev­er­al pri­vate sem­i­nars on the de­f­i­n­i­tion(s)/in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the now-fa­mous phrase "ze­ro tol­er­ance" as it ap­plies to med­ica­tion in horse rac­ing-as if I in­vent­ed the rules! That is why I am so grate­ful for the ar­ti­cle by An­dre Bap­tiste in Guardian of April 18, 2012 which hope­ful­ly gives all in­ter­est­ed par­ties suf­fi­cient ma­te­r­i­al on which to form their opin­ion/con­clu­sion. So from now on, like ex-Yan­kee catch­er Yo­gi Berra said: "in­clude me out" from fur­ther dis­cus­sion. Hav­ing said the above, let me pub­licly con­firm that de­spite "what­ev­er" has been sug­gest­ed, (a) I will con­tin­ue to en­joy Derek Chin's com­pa­ny; (b) I have al­ways ad­mired his vi­sion and will­ing­ness to take risks to make things hap­pen along with his on­go­ing com­mit­ment and con­tri­bu­tion to the rac­ing in­dus­try over the decades; and (c) whether he wins or los­es the Boo­gie Blues case does not both­er me in the least-all I ever want­ed was a de­ci­sion-af­ter four months-so that rac­ing can learn a les­son on how to deal with in­ter­nal con­flict and move for­ward in a pos­i­tive way.

When T20 can­not be beat­en

I am a 100 per cent fan of Test crick­et, ODIs and T20 so am eas­i­ly pleased but I must ad­mit that when it comes to wit­ness­ing the un­usu­al, T20 can­not be beat­en. The IPL games are full of ex­tra­or­di­nary per­for­mances and nail-bit­ing fin­ish­es, and watch­ing Chris Gayle last week hit Rahul Shar­ma for five suc­ces­sive "mas­sives" was quite a priv­i­lege.

The un­der­ly­ing IPL catch phrase seems to be "any­thing can hap­pen at any­time" so you dare not leave your chair! I was asked re­cent­ly which ten play­ers I most en­joyed watch­ing in this year's IPL, but with so many fa­mous names spread around the nine teams, how does one se­lect on­ly ten?-Chris Gayle; Vi­rat Kohli; AB de Vil­liers; Ku­mar San­gakkara; Ajin­ka Ra­hane, Shaun Marsh, Brett Lee, Dale Steyn. Dwayne Bra­vo, Kieron Pol­lard, Gau­tam Gam­bir, JP Du­miny, Kevin Pietersen, Ve­ran­der Se­hwag plus many oth­ers are play­ing in front your eyes al­most every day and al­ready 250 six­es have been hit in the first 25 games!

The in­no­v­a­tive "or­ange cap" for the lead­ing run scor­er to wear un­til his ag­gre­gate is passed (now worn by Ra­hane) and the in­ter­est­ing con­cept of a "strate­gic time out" adds to the im­age and ex­cite­ment not to men­tion the in­cred­i­ble field­ing and catch­es tak­en in every game. It is so ed­u­ca­tion­al and re­veal­ing to see the many young In­di­an play­ers in ac­tion striv­ing to im­press the na­tion­al se­lec­tors, left-han­der Ashok Menar­ia be­ing a good ex­am­ple es­pe­cial­ly as I spot­ted him when he cap­tained his coun­try's un­der-19 team in New Zealand two or three years ago. There are oth­er side at­trac­tions which make the IPL dif­fer­ent such as (a) the cam­eras fo­cus­ing on count­less gor­geous-look­ing women in the crowd (not as gor­geous as my wife but gor­geous nev­er­the­less) or the fa­cial ex­pres­sions of the un­for­tu­nate bowlers as they fol­low their best ball sail in­to space; (b) short in­ter­views with big names at ap­pro­pri­ate mo­ments; (c) ad­mir­ing the var­i­ous cos­tumes of the cheer­lead­ers re­flect­ing In­di­an cul­ture as a wel­come change from the usu­al "Four B's" (biki­ni, beads, boobs and bums) and not least (d) the en­ter­tain­ing com­men­tary of Dan­ny Mor­ri­son, past New Zealand Test bowler whose en­thu­si­as­tic voice can make a bor­ing "dot" ball sound like a spec­tac­u­lar vol­canic erup­tion.

Com­pet­ing for West In­dies picks

When one con­sid­ers the make­up of the West In­dies team play­ing Aus­tralia, one has to won­der what will hap­pen to sev­er­al of them if and when our IPL play­ers plus Sar­wan a­nd Ramdin, be­come avail­able. Gayle, Samuels, Rus­sell, Dwayne Bra­vo, Nar­ine, Coop­er, Pol­lard will pro­vide stiff com­pe­ti­tion for the likes of Barath, Kirk Ed­wards, Braith­waite, De­onar­ine, Baugh, Bishoo and Sam­my (hope­ful­ly). Chan­der­paul, Roach and Dar­ren Bra­vo ap­pear safe. Left to me, I would al­low the IPL guys to play T20 to their hearts con­tent all over the world thus al­low­ing young West In­dies play­ers to de­vel­op with­out the con­stant threat and dis­ap­point­ment of be­ing left out when­ev­er the "mon­ey men" de­cide to ap­pear na­tion­al in spir­it and agree to play for their coun­try when con­ve­nient. I am all for their free­dom of em­ploy­ment as long as they ac­cept the free­dom of se­lec­tion cri­te­ria. An­oth­er fac­tor per­tains to the last time the IPL play­ers played a first class match and to what ex­tent does this af­fect their at­ten­tion span for play­ing a long Test in­nings?

Aus­tralia not top qual­i­ty

This Aussie team is not what you would call "top qual­i­ty"-far from it. The bowl­ing at­tack must be among their worst ever and the bat­ting apart from Ponting, Hussey and Clarke is hard­ly awe in­spir­ing. Warn­er can be dev­as­tat­ing on oc­ca­sion but you would not bet house and land he will make 30. On pa­per, West In­dies may have im­proved a dec­i­mal point or two but take out the scores of Chan­der­paul and Bra­vo and what is left? Their field­ing looked bet­ter and Sam­my's field plac­ing was gen­er­al­ly good but against this Aussie team no mea­sure­ment is very mean­ing­ful. I was pleased when Kieron Pow­ell made the fi­nal team but he did not cap­i­talise on a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty. Adri­an Barath may prove more suit­able for ODIs and T20s than Test crick­et and is rather like Dave Warn­er-on oc­ca­sion he will be bril­liant but don't bet on it. I hope I am wrong as Barath is young and has put a lot of time, en­er­gy and hard work in­to his crick­et.

Barcelona-in­cred­i­ble foot­ball ma­chine

Last week I had to re­cov­er from Wigan beat­ing Man­ches­ter Unit­ed 1-0 in BPL and thought that was the last foot­ball mir­a­cle to oc­cur this mil­len­ni­um. Lo and be­hold, they went on to beat Ar­se­nal 1-0 in their next game which cuts the odds dras­ti­cal­ly if I pur­sue my pro­posed chal­lenge of Us­ain Bolt over 100m. Next thing you know, Wigan will feel they can take on De­fense Force or San Juan Jabloteh. I watched Bay­ern Mu­nich beat Re­al Madrid in the first se­mi-fi­nal of UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League and though I am a ra­bid Re­al fan, they were very dis­ap­point­ing and de­served to lose. In the sec­ond leg Re­al will have to find an­oth­er gear if they are to make up the goal dif­fer­ence and get to the fi­nal. In the oth­er se­mi fi­nal, Chelsea pro­duced a shock­er to beat Barcelona 1-0 at Stam­ford Bridge, de­spite the fact that Barcelona played most of the game in the Chelsea half, and pos­sessed the ball for an enor­mous per­cent­age of time. It was amaz­ing to wit­ness the non-stop skill and split sec­ond pass­ing of Mes­si and com­pa­ny on­ly for them to lose the match to­tal­ly against the run of play, but if read­ers want to win some mon­ey, bet 50 cents with your neigh­bour that to­mor­row (Tues­day) in the re­turn game, Barcelona will win 5-1. Even if you are not a foot­ball fan, I urge you to make the time to watch the game be­cause in your life­time, you will not see again the likes of Mes­si, Ini­es­ta, Adri­ano, Fab­re­gas, Xavi, Dani Alves and the rest of that in­cred­i­ble foot­ball ma­chine.

Lar­ry's pre­dic­tions

About 18 years ago I helped Lar­ry Gomes with a speech he gave at the Oval (I for­get the ac­tu­al oc­ca­sion) in which he pre­dict­ed that in the near fu­ture, first class crick­et would be played in Mi­a­mi and Toron­to not on­ly for the for­eign dol­lars but to ap­peal to the many crick­et play­ing im­mi­grants. It seems he was cor­rect with the match­es to be played in Flori­da lat­er this year. In the re­cent past, Lar­ry has spo­ken to crick­et au­di­ences in cities like Chica­go and De­troit where mil­lions live. I spoke to Lar­ry three days ago when he re­mind­ed me of his Oval speech.

-Good luck to all our sports­men and women in the com­ing week, and God bless our na­tion in His own spe­cial way.