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.