Sport of Pain, and surrounding areas

So we went, yes, for the cricket in part. It was a most ignominious capitulation. The scoreboard had a premonition early on in the first game itself, when first it refused to start (and I contemplated watching a whole game without precise knowledge of the score) and then, when it came to, we got this.



But cricket in the Caribbean is about much more than the score. The first day, I got adopted by the guy sitting to my left, a geophysicist of Indian extraction. Over the course of the second innings of the game, he made sure I imbibed no fewer than six alcoholic drinks -- one Carib ("the pussy beer"), three Stags ("for the drinking man), and two loaded icy glasses of something he called "scotch", poured from his Gatorade bottle and tasting suspiciously like dessert. We talked about everything from his job to the ethnic Indian culture, and he gave me tips on Chutney Soca. The guy in front spent three increasingly incoherent hours telling me how he'd sat in that same seat as a kid of eleven and watched Wadekar and Sardesai (and oh yes Gavaskar). By the end, we were all friends (except when Brian Lara got out -- then he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "We no friends right now, man.") When we left, ten minutes before the inevitable Windies victory, as we walked down the steps to the exit a half dozen people yelled goodbye to us, and I'll find it hard to forget the sight of several rows of people waving back.

On the second day, I was sitting next to a rather more insular group of giggly college students, so it was my friend's turn to get adopted. By the four very large Jamaican / Bajan ladies sitting in the row ahead. When Sehwag got out at 96, they turned around and felt his heart, stroked his cheeks, and waved their flags under his nose. In the end, we lost both games, but I was well way past caring.

Here, for the flavor, is a snapshot of Harbhajan bowling to Sarwan, with Gayle at the non-striker's end.



And here's some local color outside the stadium.



There are other forms of beauty in the Caribbean, too. Cricket apart, it was the most amazing vacation. On the day between the games, we took a car up to Fort George, an old British outpost.





And then there are the beaches. Imagine a tropical beach where you are the only person. Imagine getting out of a car, scrambling down a hundred feet of rocky slope, and stepping out on seemingly untouched silvery sand. Now, Blogger won't allow me to upload all these pix at the same time so I'll do that in the next post, but in the meantime I bring you - Premonitions of Paradise.