Vin­ode Mam­chan

Again mad­ness rolls off the tongue of Eng­land's Ge­of­frey Boy­cott. Boy, the things some peo­ple do, to get a job is amaz­ing! A man, who has played 108 Test match­es, judges a young man af­ter one Test match on a bat­ting-friend­ly pitch and says he is noth­ing spe­cial. I won­der if we have got­ten the best of Boy­cott and the things he says now should just be ig­nored. The very con­tro­ver­sial for­mer Eng­land open­er made the com­ments dur­ing his bi­week­ly pod­cast "Bowl at Boycs" on Cricin­fo.com this week. Vot­ed Play­er-of-the-Se­ries at the re­cent IPL (In­di­an Pre­mier League), Nar­ine had a qui­et Test match de­but last week when he took none for 70 in 15 overs against Eng­land at Edg­bas­ton. Boy­cott said he was scep­ti­cal about the 24-year-old's chances of be­com­ing a ma­jor force in the longer for­mat. Well, what Boy­cott should ob­serve is that even the man rat­ed as the best bowler in the world, Greame Swann, could not even trou­ble any of the West In­di­an bats­men on the same pitch. How­ev­er, he re­mains some­thing spe­cial to the York­shire­man. I know that Nar­ine is men­tal­ly strong and would ig­nore Boy­cott's com­ments and con­tin­ue on his path to suc­cess. The tirade on our play­ers con­tin­ue abound in Eng­land from me­dia per­son­nel at­tached to the Eng­lish as well as the West In­dies. We all know that at­tack on the West In­dies teams of pre­vi­ous years from the Eng­lish me­dia is the norm and it con­tin­ues to­day. Weeks be­fore any West In­di­an team vis­its Eng­land, the me­dia would start their at­tack, even in the days when we beat the liv­ing day­lights out of the them. Yes, I agree that Nar­ine has not set the place alight af­ter one Test match but it is too soon to dis­miss him and I am sure that Boy­cott would be made to eat his words. Re­mem­ber in 1992 when Shane Warne played his first Test against In­dia in Aus­tralia and fin­ished with 1/150. Well, the same man went on to take the small mat­ter of 708 Test wick­ets. So let's not be too quick to judge which way Nar­ine's ball is go­ing to move.

Treat our fans with re­spect

Through thick and thin the West In­dies team has had a band of sup­port­ers, who would trav­el to all parts of the world to sup­port them. At times when the team was un­der at­tack on and off the field, just a glance at the "Posse" would have led to warm feel­ings from many a West In­di­an crick­eter. And how do we re­pay them, ap­par­ent­ly with no re­spect at all. Dur­ing the sec­ond one-day in­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) be­tween West In­dies and Eng­land the reg­u­lars, in­clud­ing Pe­ter Matthews, had to buy their tick­ets. The "Posse" over in Eng­land have been fol­low­ing the team all over the coun­try in the freez­ing cold and in the rain for all their match­es, warm up, Tests and ODIs. As has be­come the norm, the West In­dies team play­ers are giv­en a num­ber com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets on tour and they would dis­trib­ute them to the fans. How­ev­er, this has not hap­pened on this oc­ca­sion as some peo­ple were keep­ing all. Fans of the "Posse" con­tact­ed me with the sor­ry news say­ing that they have been spend­ing hard-earned mon­ey for trav­el and ho­tel, yet tick­ets were giv­en to peo­ple whom they have nev­er seen be­fore at the crick­et. Ac­cord­ing to one of the sup­port­ers: "This is an ab­solute re­flec­tion of how our board and the lo­cal boards are run, all for them­selves and friends. They have no idea. Windies' next of­fi­cial Test tour here is in 2017. I would like to see how many peo­ple fol­low the team around the coun­try like we do. They all have the same short term think­ing-to­day not to­mor­row or next week. They can­not see the big­ger pic­ture. Can't think, don't think, won't think."

Cheers for the Tri­ni Posse

The Tri­ni Posse has come un­der at­tack this year with a num­ber of fans say­ing that they can­not en­joy their crick­et in peace be­cause of the noise com­ing from the par­ty stand. I won­der if these peo­ple rather sit and look at crick­et with 20 peo­ple in the Oval, or with thou­sands in at­ten­dance lead­ing to a great at­mos­phere. The Tri­ni Posse has been scold­ed for bring­ing in peo­ple at the crick­et, who do not know much about the game. Well while some see it that way, I see it dif­fer­ent­ly. The Tri­ni Posse has in­tro­duced a num­ber of new peo­ple to the sport of crick­et and while at their first few at­tempts, they might have their backs turned to the crick­et and their eyes fo­cussed on the bevy of beau­ties in the stand, it changes af­ter a while and you have a fan for life. Go­ing in­to the Tri­ni Posse Stand you would be amazed at how many peo­ple in there re­al­ly fol­low the crick­et. There are three big screen tele­vi­sions at the bar, so even when there is a large gath­er­ing around the wa­ter­ing hole, they keep abreast with the crick­et through the tele­vi­sion mon­i­tors. I think that the Tri­ni Posse is do­ing their part to bring peo­ple back to the game of crick­et, us­ing en­ter­tain­ment as the bait. Now, they have even gone fur­ther by giv­ing back to the sport. They are one of the three ti­tle spon­sors of the TTCB Pow­er­play fran­chise crick­et tour­na­ment. More than that they even own a team in the com­pe­ti­tion and have con­tract­ed a num­ber of play­ers for the tour­na­ment. So at the end of the day, the Tri­ni Posse is per­form­ing a triple role dur­ing the fran­chise tour­na­ment. They are ti­tle spon­sors, team own­ers and hos­pi­tal­i­ty providers. Hats off the guys like Dr Nigel Ca­ma­cho, Sam Sa­loum and Pe­ter Math­ews for their fore­sight and for their as­sis­tance in keep­ing the game that we all love so much, alive for the while.