Col­in E.H. Croft

I do not know who will win Caribbean T-20 2013 to­day, but I am whole-heart­ed­ly among those who ac­cept that Caribbean T-20 has been a big­ger, bet­ter, ex­cel­lent­ly run, tremen­dous suc­cess.

It has been a wild ca­coph­o­ny of nois­es and colour.

Noth­ing like this, as re­gards fans ac­tu­al­ly plan­ning their lives–per­son­al, pro­fes­sion­al, fam­i­ly, school–around go­ing to the are­nas con­cerned, to see crick­et and to par­ty, has hap­pened for years, decades even, not since our hal­cy­on days be­tween 1965 and 1995. This ex­per­i­ment was well worth it.

Not since Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards led teams that pul­verised the crick­et world, or, lat­er, the ad­vent of spec­tac­u­lar in­di­vid­ual crick­eters like Bri­an Lara, has the pop­u­lace been so en­thu­si­as­tic, en­ter­tained, en­thralled, by our crick­et, even if on­ly for T-20 games which last about three hours.

In the ear­li­er two decades of that 30-year pe­ri­od es­pe­cial­ly–very like­ly armed with enough var­i­ous vict­uals and strong drink, not to men­tion mas­sive shoul­ders to car­ry Philips and Grundig ra­dios as big as 20-inch tele­vi­sions–folks from all parts lined up by the tens of thou­sands to see their he­roes.

From as ear­ly as mid­night on the day be­fore games, all, in­clud­ing ac­tu­al ac­tive crick­eters back then, nois­i­ly squat­ted to get in­to Bour­da, Kens­ing­ton Oval, Sabi­na Park or Queen's Park Oval, to see the likes of (Sir) Gary Sobers, Ro­han Kan­hai, Clive Lloyd, Michael Hold­ing and oth­ers, even yours tru­ly!

I made my Test at­ten­dance de­but in 1965, aged 12, to see Aus­tralia be­ing lam­pooned by the likes of Lance Gibbs, Wes Hall and Con­rad Hunte, cour­tesy of ac­cess­ing that con­flu­ence point of fences, at George­town Foot­ball Club and George­town Crick­et Club–"Bour­da"–on Re­gent Street in George­town.

I al­so re­mem­ber, most vivid­ly, even af­ter be­ing se­lect­ed for Guyana's Youth team in 1970, aged 17, that, as a fi­nal year stu­dent of Cen­tral High School in 1971, my very first time in that pay­ing at­ten­dance quag­mire, laden with every­thing "Old Sylvia" could con­jure, and fit in­to a mas­sive bag, trav­el­ling from Uni­ty-Lan­cast­er, to join the wait­ing throngs even be­fore mid­night, to see In­dia v West In­dies at Bour­da.

Even Min­is­ters of Gov­ern­ment had to join those queues some­times, if they want­ed to see crick­et. Of course, they al­so dili­gent­ly tried to gar­ner votes.

Michael Man­ley, then Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica, and (Sir) Er­rol Bar­row, then Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, both ab­solute­ly mad crick­et sup­port­ers, had to get spe­cial pass­es and au­tho­ri­sa­tion from ei­ther West In­dies or even tour­ing team cap­tains and man­agers.

The warmth of see­ing pa­trons with Guyanese, Ja­maican, T&T, and every oth­er flag, even ill-placed USA, British and Cana­di­an flags, en­joy­ing them­selves at the T-20 games, be­hav­ing, sup­port­ing, abus­ing even, as if there was no to­mor­row, was as re­al and ex­hil­a­rat­ing as some of the crick­et it­self.

In­deed, in my re­cent trav­els in USA and Cana­da, there seemed to have been even more as­so­ci­a­tion to West In­dies crick­et by for­mer na­tives than ever be­fore. Even bad economies, shoot­ings and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters took back seats in dis­cus­sions and en­joy­ment of this T-20 tour­na­ment; very re­fresh­ing in­deed!

Trinidad & To­ba­go Crick­et Board, Queen's Park Crick­et Club, St Lu­cia Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion, Beause­jour Sta­di­um Man­age­ment and Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion, in ca­hoots with West In­dies Crick­et Board's Events Man­age­ment teams, should be ex­treme­ly proud of their ef­fort and ex­pe­ri­ences.

Caribbean T-20 2013 was a great show of West In­di­an en­joy­ment and a per­fect pre­am­ble to car­ni­val. En­joy!

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