Hey, you know your Eyewitness isn’t one to mince words or pussyfoot around issues…and certainly not one as massive as the blow to the national psyche that was delivered by the Warriors when they meekly folded to the Tallawahs on Wednesday night. Your Eyewitness had predicted a victory – but it wasn’t based on mere sentiments. After they returned to Guyana at the bottom of the rankings for the final season games, he’d noted that the Guyanese fans – domestic and foreign – were gonna be there as never before to urge them on. Those fans have been most intimidating in all the previous years – and have grown in numbers.
And this support was for the profound reason that cricket is intertwined with our history of struggle to announce (to the Imperialists in the beginning, and the rest of the world now) that we’re equal to everyone. Within the Caribbean territories, there was always a good-natured competition among us as to who’s better!! In cricket, the size of the island doesn’t matter – on the field, each of the eleven could achieve as much as the other!! So, regionally, the Caribbean teams were battling for local bragging rights – while internationally – esp against England and Australia — they were asserting our quest for equality.
Whether we like it or not, most accept that this T20 version of the game – most suited to our once-derided “temperament”! – is now the dominant one. The T20 tail’s wagging the Test dog!! Well, back to the GAW tournament: the team rallied on the support of the fans, and won four games in a row, to catapult them to the second place in the season’s rankings, just behind the Barbados Royals. Their subsequent walloping by the Bajan Royals was excused by the fans as due to a possible loss of focus, because it was a dead rubber – meaning it was of no consequence on their entry to the first qualifier.
But Wednesday night’s game against the Tallawahs was different – the loser was gonna be kicked out of the tournament’s finals against the league-leading Royals. It was do or die. And the Guyanese fans once again trooped in – led by the President – to give them unequivocal and vocal support! But even before the game began, your Eyewitness felt something was amiss. Inexplicably, after winning the toss, the captain decided to send in the Tallawahs to bat!! Everyone knows that, after the first innings, the pitch would deteriorate and become harder to score on!! “Why, Hetty, why??” moaned fans in the stands.
After the Tallawahs scored a record 225 – with the captain in the outfield and not rallying his bowlers – and then sent himself at number 6, the fans knew it was all over.
Guyana deserves better!!
…change on LGBTQ?
A poll just conducted on behalf of SASOD shows that “53.9% of Guyanese” feel the law forbidding consensual sex between adult men ought to be changed. From the 1070 persons polled, 34.5% said they accept LGBTQ persons, 37.9% are tolerant, and 12% “hate” them! Another 15.6% had “no comment”.
While on the bright side, almost 75% of Guyanese at least “tolerate” LGBTQ persons, your Eyewitness is still alarmed that 12% actually HATE them!! Evidently, this is down from 25%, recorded nine years ago – but it is still astounding! Why would persons HATE other persons whose lifestyle they disagree with?? To call a spade a spade, it’s primarily two of our major religions, Islam and Evangelical Christianity, that actually forbid the practice. Some of their adherents project that stricture as “hate”. However, your Eyewitness is intrigued by the fact that both Islamic Pakistan and Bangladesh accept a “third sex” – which might be “trans”??
Be that as it may, your Eyewitness believes that all humans are God’s creation, and must be accepted in their diversity!!
