hugh hen­der­son

The world is in such po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and moral chaos it is tough to find "hap­py" sto­ries to write about but sport is an area in which there is usu­al­ly some good news. For ex­am­ple, I watched the IPL match be­tween Kolko­ta Knight Rid­ers (Sunil Nar­ine) and Mum­bai In­di­ans (Kieron Pol­lard) which KKR won by 32 runs and more or less as­sured them­selves a place in the fi­nal four. Pol­lard and Dwayne Smith failed for Mum­bai but Sunil Nar­ine en­joyed in­cred­i­ble suc­cess which will soon trans­late in­to in­cred­i­ble $uc­ce$$. Nar­ine took 4-15 in his four overs; was named Man of the Match and was giv­en the Pur­ple Cap which adorns the bowler with most IPL wick­ets at each stage of the tour­na­ment-this game was #65 and Nar­ine has cap­tured 21 wick­ets in his 13 games. Morne Morkel and La­sith Ma­lin­ga al­so have 21 wick­ets, but Nar­ine's run rate per over is best.

What is more mean­ing­ful than Nar­ine's im­pres­sive wick­et haul, is the com­men­ta­tors re­fer­ring to him as "spe­cial"; "stun­ning"; "the find of the tour­na­ment"; " the man with a gold­en fu­ture"; "im­pos­si­ble to pick which way the ball will turn"; "a cap­tain's dream"; to men­tion a few of the high­est com­pli­ments. When Nar­ine clean bowled the fa­mous Sachin Ten­dulkar, the ball was de­scribed as hav­ing "to­tal­ly bam­boo­zled the Great One". How­ev­er, de­spite his overnight fame, Sunil Nar­ine on the field re­mains cool, calm, hum­ble, un­demon­stra­tive com­pared with most oth­er less­er per­form­ers and some­times ap­pears to pinch him­self to en­sure he is not in a dream world. It is a priv­i­lege for all of us to claim that like Sunil Nar­ine and Bri­an Lara, we al­so hail from T&T. No doubt when Sunil re­turns home, the PR vul­tures will de­scend in full force, claim to have known him since birth and al­ways "knew for cer­tain" he would be a star. "Yuh doh re­mem­ber ah tell yuh so in 2005 lime­ing by Son­ny­boy and yuh tell me ah mad as hell? So who mad now?" You know the type we all have to put up with!

Let the Eng­lish talk

It is in­ter­est­ing to read what the ex­perts are say­ing about the Eng­land-West In­dies Test se­ries but I hope we will wit­ness some good in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances even if we do not win as a team. In the re­cent past I have sung the prais­es of young Kier­an Pow­ell, a left han­der of ob­vi­ous class and I was thrilled to see him score a cen­tu­ry against Eng­lish Li­ons, on­ly the sec­ond "ton" of his ca­reer. He scored on­ly five at Lords on Thurs­day but I hope he is giv­en a good run. The two young T&T bats­men, Barath and Bra­vo en­joyed rea­son­able de­buts at Lords, though Bra­vo's run out was a sham­bles. Con­grats al­so to young Shan­non Gabriel-he could do far worse than pick­ing Lords for his Test de­but to in­tro­duce him­self to the crick­et world! I will nev­er un­der­stand how any side goes in­to a Test with­out a recog­nised spin­ner, but what do I know?

Sport­ing thrills

The two most thrilling sport­ing events last week will keep their place in his­to­ry for many years to come. Man­ches­ter City's dra­mat­ic come from be­hind, two goals in stop­page time vic­to­ry to de­feat QPR and pip Man­ches­ter Unit­ed for the League ti­tle on goal av­er­age was more than most foot­ball fans could bear and the nerves the re­spec­tive team man­agers and re­serves on the bench had to en­dure were im­pos­si­ble to imag­ine. Most lo­cal Eng­lish foot­ball lovers sup­port Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, Liv­er­pool, Ar­se­nal and Chelsea, but I hope all are hap­py to see City cap­ture the ti­tle for the first time in 44 years.

None big­ger than the game

What re­al­ly ticks me off is see­ing Ramnaresh Sar­wan rack­ing up the runs for Leices­ter in the Coun­ty Cham­pi­onship when he should have been an ob­vi­ous choice for the tour­ing team and Dwayne Bra­vo ex­celling in IPL but can't make WI team be­cause Dar­ren Sam­my is cap­tain and there is no room for both. I al­so en­joyed watch­ing Mikey Hold­ing near­ly split­ting a gut on TV on the is­sue of Jerome Tay­lor not play­ing for WI. I know Chris Gayle is the big news and while I love to see him bat in T20 games and he is an en­ter­tain­er with­out peer, whether he comes or goes on the Re­gion­al team in the fu­ture does not keep me awake at night. No-one is big­ger than the game, not even Chris Gayle and his at­ti­tude to­wards au­thor­i­ty does not turn me on. That is not lead­er­ship by my de­f­i­n­i­tion. By the way did you know that Chan­der­paul is the play­er who has played in most los­ing Tests (66) in crick­et his­to­ry? He is now play­ing his 141st Test.

Se­vere cul­ture shock

If you want to suf­fer se­vere cul­ture shock, do like me and switch from view­ing 50 plus IPL games in the past six weeks to the Lords Test. Af­ter 67 games in IPL, over 1.7 mil­lion scream­ing fans have seen over 19,000 runs scored of which 10,000 plus runs have come from bound­aries; 750 wick­ets have fall­en, 630 six­es have been hit and the nor­mal rate per over is 9-10 runs. For com­par­i­son pur­pos­es, check the crowd noise lev­el and gen­er­al pace of life at Lords and see if your heart is still beat­ing!

Olympic adren­a­lin in full flow

With the Lon­don Olympics com­ing up soon, it was ex­cit­ing to see the track and field meet held last week in South Ko­rea with 19-year-old Grena­di­an Ki­rani James strid­ing as ef­fort­less­ly as a gazelle to win the mens' 400m like a true world cham­pi­on, with T&T's Ren­ny Quow fin­ish­ing sec­ond. Our Richard Thomp­son fin­ished 4th in the 100m but did not look his best though the com­pe­ti­tion was "hot". Two oth­er out­stand­ing ef­forts came from the Ethiopi­an, Aman, in the mens's 800m and Amer­i­can sprint­er Carmeli­ta Jeter in the women's 100m, so as I an­tic­i­pate the swim­ming and all oth­er events. My Olympic adren­a­lin is in full flow! Is yours?

Vi­su­al treat of brute force

Last Thurs­day night I stayed up long af­ter my nor­mal bed­time to see the IPL game be­tween Chris Gayle's team and Veren­der Se­hwag's team (Se­hwag was ill, luck­i­ly for him!) in a "must win" sit­u­a­tion for Gayle's team, cap­tained by young Vi­rat Kohli who lost the toss and was asked to bat first. Open­er Dilchan was out with the score at 10, af­ter which Gayle and Kohli scored an un­bro­ken part­ner­ship of 204 runs in 18 overs, set­ting a tar­get of 215. Gayle scored 128 not out off on­ly 66 balls with 13 mur­der­ous six­es most of which Neil Arm­strong could have caught on the moon, while Kohli scored 73 not out with one six and nine gor­geous bound­aries to com­ple­ment Gayle's his­toric achieve­ment-a vi­su­al treat of brute force and breath-tak­ing fi­nesse. In the 2012 IPL, Gayle has now hit 56 six­es in 15 games which is too in­cred­i­ble for words.

He hits a six every eight balls! I feel tru­ly blessed that I was able to view both mag­nif­i­cent spec­ta­cles and hope that you too were sim­i­lar­ly priv­i­leged. Thank you God for giv­ing us foot­ball, crick­et and mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, thus al­low­ing us the op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­lax and smile and for­get all the neg­a­tives that sur­round us every day.