…it’s T-20 Cricket!!
By the time you (dear readers) read this, the first game of the Hero CPL 2017 season in Guyana would’ve been played already. You would have known whether the Warriors won or lost. But let me state here and now that this Eyewitness is convinced the Warriors will emerge victorious!! He’s putting his reputation on the line! But he has to admit that, like it is with cricket fanatics, his convictions aren’t all based on rationality or logic.
Now, it 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 has become a much more frenetic place in the last half-century. For one, all the colonies in the West Indies are independent, and are being pushed to higher levels of achievement by different forces.
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 administrators, who didn’t think players like Worrel and other “coloureds” were fit to captain an international cricketing team!
Have you followed the tone and actions of the present WICB Board chairman towards West Indian players? “Boy, you better doff your cap and look at the ground when you speak to me!!” Well T-20 gave those players the opportunity to tell the WICB where to get off with that kind of attitude!
Don’t get your Eyewitness wrong…the independence of the players to be given their dignity as human beings still has a way to go; but after the removal of the ban from Bravo, we know where this will end, don’t we?
So your Eyewitness returns to his prediction — that his Warriors will win the game against the Tallawahs. As he said before, there is no analysis and logic about that prediction; just his knowledge that the cliché “cricket is a game of glorious uncertainty” has, like all clichés, more than a grain of truth.
And that truth is: “faith can move mountains”!!
…it’s peoples’ lives!
This inability of the authorities to stem the flow of contraband into Lot 12 Camp Street is getting more serious by the minute. Last year it led to the death of 17 prisoners; last month to the torching of the wooden buildings built back in the 19th century, and the escape of four convicted murderers – one being involved in the mass murders at Lusignan (13 dead, including kids) and Bartica (15 dead).
We won’t even mention the Lusignan PRISON fiasco. Cause now, with only 85 prisoners from the original 1000+ hosted at Camp St returned to the single concrete structure at Camp St, all sorts of contraband — including improvised weapons and phones — have again been unearthed.
Now, it doesn’t need a rocket scientist to conclude (3 CoIs have already so concluded!) that something is rotten at the core of our prison system.
Will it take an armed assault by the army — like just happened in Venezuela — to retake our main prison?
…destruction of lungs
In early June, Minister Patterson promised to “fix”– the very next day — the East Canje Public Road. Seems all he did was drop off “crusher run”, which has now turned to dust that’s invading the people’s lungs.
Ah, what a tangled web….!
