Col­in Croft

As tremen­dous­ly ex­hil­a­rat­ing, sport­ing 2012 eased in­to ever hope­ful 2013, West In­dies crick­et is per­fect­ly placed to con­tin­ue its re-emer­gence as the stan­dard by which the rest of the crick­et world, es­pe­cial­ly in lim­it­ed overs crick­et should be mea­sured. Caribbean T-20 2013 is the right start!

While most of our present crick­eters have made good names and some­times large for­tunes play­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ly around the world, we are more es­pe­cial­ly proud that ICC's World T-20 2012 tro­phy would be show­cased, cour­tesy of Dar­ren Sam­my, Ot­tis Gib­son and the rest of team who did so well in Sri Lan­ka.

What a fil­lip and boon, in every way, that has been for West In­dies crick­et!

West In­dies T-20 2013 is al­most cer­tain­ly the last such com­pe­ti­tion in our re­gion, since, al­ready, there is that fran­chise sit­u­a­tion ful­ly sched­uled to make its en­try in­to our crick­et next year. This like­ly last re­gion­al T-20 com­pe­ti­tion should be ful­ly savoured!

My most dif­fi­cult crick­et en­coun­ters ever, in many ways, was when I ap­peared for Guyana in re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tions; not on­ly for sim­ple brag­ging rights ei­ther. Af­ter na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ences, play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for West In­dies, in con­cert with some great play­ers, was a rel­a­tive breeze!

Then, as now, each play­er was, and is, rep­re­sent­ing the very nu­cle­us; their home­lands; of their very ad­vent and ex­is­tence as pro­fes­sion­al sports­men. That ab­solute be­gin­ning, back to the bare fun­da­men­tals and bases, al­ways did; al­ways will; bring out the raw an­i­mal­is­tic at­ti­tudes in all of us!

We al­so all know that noth­ing evokes more in­su­lar­i­ty in each of us than our own crick­et, re­gard­less of what every­one sug­gests, pre­tends and por­trays. No-where in the world can such abuse be heaped on any rep­re­sen­ta­tive crick­eter than when he is play­ing for our own re­gion­al Caribbean teams!

I still re­mem­ber Ja­maica and Trinidad & To­ba­go, great friends and col­leagues when play­ing for West In­dies, squar­ing up with very bad, mas­sive pugilis­tic in­tent, in Stan­ford's very first 20-20, fore-run­ner of Caribbean T-20 2013. None of the play­ers thought of West In­dies then, with on­ly "yard" on their minds!

For­get friend­ships when you play for your coun­try; pride, de­ter­mi­na­tion and brava­do bring out at­ti­tudes, en­er­gies and be­hav­iour many did not even know ex­ist­ed or were ca­pa­ble of!

West In­dies crick­et is al­ways ex­cit­ing, full of en­er­gy and col­or, and, as have been hailed every­where, it is very pleas­ant to see West In­dies back on top again, with our all-en­com­pass­ing, ever-present swag­ger!

Our play­ers still smile, quite wor­ry­ing­ly, re­al­ly, when we lose in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Some­one has to ex­plain to me what ex­act­ly there is to smile about when you lose! Maybe that is the new dis­pen­sa­tion!

But that is ex­act­ly why our crick­et is so var­ied, sto­ried and fun. No one knows what will hap­pen next, not even play­ers them­selves, even as pre­pared and, in some cas­es, as busi­ness-like as they are. What is no­tice­able is that our play­ers seem more re­spon­sive and round­ed than in the re­cent past.

The pure, unadul­ter­at­ed en­joy­ment, the cel­e­bra­tion of Sam­my, tak­ing a catch for Wind­ward Is­lands or West In­dies, is shared by team-mates, and each of the Caribbean's over sev­en mil­lions in­hab­i­tants. That en­er­gy even man­ages to tran­scend what­ev­er ills one has at that time!

CT-20 2013 starts enough crick­et to al­low even skep­tics to be­come fans, so much of it to be en­dured and en­joyed in this strange, some­what melan­choly year. By the end of 2013, West In­dies can al­so add ICC's 50-over Cham­pi­onship, the last one too, by win­ning Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy 2013 in Unit­ed King­dom!

So, Trinidad & To­ba­go, as T-20 2012 cham­pi­ons, have much work to do, even if, on pa­per, they seem ca­pa­ble of win­ning again. As "Big' George Fore­man, for­mer world heavy-weight cham­pi­ons sug­gest­ed.

"To be­come cham­pi­on, I ran three miles dai­ly. As world cham­pi­on, I need­ed to run ten miles per day, at least, to be ready, so that young up­starts who want­ed my crown would have to work dou­bly hard to take it from me. Keep­ing my cham­pi­onship was much more dif­fi­cult than get­ting it in the first place!"

Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and for­mer cham­pi­ons, Guyana will, as al­ways, be spoil­ing for a fight. Es­pe­cial­ly Chris Gayle's ab­sence for Ja­maica, and Guyana's in­clu­sion of both Shiv Chan­der­paul and Ramnaresh Sar­wan, both hav­ing not fea­tured in this for­mat for some time, could help the lat­ter just have an edge, on­ly just!

Lee­ward Is­lands, whose over­all crick­et has been al­most co­matose for so long, sure­ly must raise its head, and is due, like Baron Franken­stein's mon­ster, to make some spec­tac­u­lar come­back!

Wind­ward Is­lands, whose cap­tain is al­so West In­dies cap­tain, are al­ways en­er­gised, and have some­what erased the "small is­land" moniker and taunt from the in­hab­i­tants of the oth­er more pros­per­ous and more pop­u­lous Caribbean coun­tries, with the ad­vent of Sam­my to our in­ter­na­tion­al team's cap­tain­cy.

Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges will not win the com­pe­ti­tion, but could be spoil­ers for oth­er, bet­ter teams, with the al­most ubiq­ui­tous up­sets and wins against the big­ger teams at the wrong time. It may be too close to call, but CT-20 2013 starts an­oth­er year of ex­cit­ing West In­dies crick­et. En­joy!