All change | 14 April 2007

I daresay bonny Barbados and some blazing cricket in its final fortnight might retrieve disenchantment with the 2007 World Cup. But I doubt it. Bob Woolmer’s calamity still beggars belief but, that apparent outrage aside, the event as a whole has been one of drawn-out, sanitised tedium. The manner in which the colourfully spontaneous joie de vivre of Caribbean cricket and its crowds has been drained from the whole occasion has made old hands weep for what was and what might have been. On television, the group matches have been played out, mute and inglorious, to tier upon tier of empty seats — scarce a trumpet blast heard, nor joyous rhythm of drum. Friends over there tell me it seems as if laughter, even, has been banished; certainly all ‘real thing’ calypso jollities are purged. Local cricket lovers have been totally priced out of the market, and I fancy those thousands of expected tourists sensed the mood and steered clear. The game’s governing body, the pusillanimous International Cricket Council, will in due time doubtless pronounce from their (as Wisden calls it) Dubaiivory tower block that, thanks alone to them, everything went swimmingly.

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Never was the overall torpor of the enterprise more evident than in last week’s two top-of-the-bill contests in St John’s, capital of Antigua. They played in a swank new out-of-town stadium built by the Chinese. Hardly anyone turned up; colourful seats, sure; colourful atmosphere, nix. The vast car parks were completely empty. Sky Television’s director did his level best — but failed totally — to represent the sprinkling of spectator tourists as a vast, rapt throng. I thought fondly of the splintery old Recreation Ground, now forlorn and forgotten a few miles downtown. The fabled field hasn’t a long Test match history, but it exudes a warmth and charm close to the imperishable essence of Caribbean cricket.