By the time you (dear readers) read this, the CPL 2023 season finals would’ve already been over. We’d beaten the Tallawahs like a snake last Friday night – and your Eyewitness must say he didn’t feel even a smidgen of remorse – even though they’re owned and coached by Guyanese!! Hey…in cricket you gotta stick with your team through thick and thin – can’t be a fair-weather fan!! So you’ll know whether the Warriors won or lost against their arch enemy the Trini Knight Riders – who skinned us up good last week right here at Providence. But let me declare here and now that this Eyewitness is convinced the Warriors gonna emerge victorious!! He’s putting his reputation on the line! But he gotta admit – like it is with all cricket fanatics his conviction isn’t all based on rationality or logic.
Now this might be the same with fans of all sports – but your Eyewitness wouldn’t know. All he knows is cricket and over the last decade, T-20 Cricket. To paraphrase the doyen of Caribbean writers (not just CRICKET writers!) CLR James, your Eyewitness asks, “What do they know of T-20 cricket who only T-20 cricket know?”
While James wrote about Test Cricket giving us then colonial West Indians a powerful weapon in our struggle for independence from Britain – on the cricket field, we showed THEM who was man!! – times have changed. The world’s become a much more frenetic place in the last half- a century. For one, all the West Indies colonies are independent and we’re being pushed to higher levels of achievement by our oil!!
If Test cricket allowed us to show our worth as “a people”, T-20 in general – and CPL T-20 in particular, has allowed us to show our worth as individuals – both off and on the field. Look at it from the perspective of the players in Test Cricket. The WICB just stepped into the shoes of the departed British administers – who hadn’t even though players like Worrel and other “coloureds” were fit to captain an international cricketing team!
Well, with Guyana in the lead with its Warriors, we’ve shown the world that we can be just as good – not just in playing the game – but in organizing and marketing this “cricket played louder”!! So, your Eyewitness returns to his prediction that his Warriors bury the TKRs. As he said before there’s no analysis and logic about that prediction; just his knowledge that the cliché – cricket is a game of glorious uncertainty – like all clichés has more than a grain of truth.
And that truth is: “faith can move mountains”!!
… cohesion thing!
At the CPL games in Providence, your Eyewitness once again saw Guyanese of all persuasions – young and old, male and female; the in-between genders; the six races – and dozens of mixtures and ethnicities!! And guess what? When their team was on that cricket field they were beyond COHERING!! They cheered in unison when the ball sailed over the fence; groaned when a Warrior was “out”; spontaneously hugged each other when their team won…and consoled each other when they lost. (Next time!!)
When the team lost that earlier game against TKR they all shook their heads ruefully. And when they won that eliminator against the Tallawahs…you’d think we won the championship. But no…they’d just won the hearts of the Guyanese people who were all beating as one!! Social Cohesion ain’t gonna come from speeches – especially from politicians. Our people have rightfully become very cynical about their “politricks”.
When we stand behind ‘we own” that’s when we realise we’ve much more in common that in difference.
…ploy
Didn’t your Eyewitness tell it like it is?? That Opposition “meeting with Jeffries” is gonna be in Washingtom – not Guyana. It’s actually a “two-fer”!! Jeffries had already been slated to give the feature address to the Opposition’s proxy “Conference” – and they were gonna be there anyway!!
