Mikey Holding's Last Laugh

Well Holding had the last laugh, didn?t he? Look, I don?t know if, first day of the first Test match, you saw the sign on TV:

"Nice weather ? ent Mikey? (I may be Trinidadianising the Guyanese here but the sarcastic sentiment is the same, the sun blazing down on Bourda).

Holding, forthrightly, explained the context, reminding viewers how given that statistics showed that 20 per cent of Test matches in Guyana had been rained out, he had recommended the abandoning of Bourda instead offering as a sop an increased number of One-Day matches.

?They have never allowed me to forget that,? he said, the sign, steadily, making the point but as we know now this Test became another sodden statistic the brilliant weather turning bad in that lightening Guyanese way and now West Indian cricket eyes turn to Trinidad where, hopefully, we have had our share of rain, Sunday seeing me soaked to the skin down at Pier 1 where I had gone to take in Meiling?s Model Search and where, incidentally, was recorded not only heavy rainfall but the largest number of beautiful people ever to assemble at one single scenic site.

Weather permitting therefore (and why shouldn?t it permit, this being the dry season, dammit!, and we already having had all our April showers shoved into one long depressing down-pour) the Oval will host the real overture of the series, a match going the full five days allowing us to answer some of the questions that were barely raised in the just completed (or should that be ?uncompleted?) truncated version.

High among these, I gather from the streets, is whether Stuart Williams and Junior Murray are really worth their places on the team or whether in going for form the selectors erred, town saying that they ?fed up? with them both, particularly Stuart, the man out to an enduring fault, LBW stuck in the crease instead of stretching well forward, the howl being to drop him now, I protesting vainly, if fairly, that you can?t drop a Busta four-century man on the strength (or should that be ?weakness? of just one inning).

A nex? question is whether Lara will make runs (not that Trinidadians dropping the Trinidadian boy if he doesn?t), the ire still rising over the way he was given out and I remarking that that is the reality of the game until the decision is taken to use the technology to sort out this sort of thing.

For me the worry about that ?out? is the space and time it robbed him of playing himself in, the flat Bourda wicket, I am thinking, ready made for a batsman, long out, to get himself back in.

Another is the ability, or lack of it, of the West Indians to get, well, these ?East? Indians out not once but twice, none of the bowlers convincing me that they can get something out of a wicket that has not a bloody thing in it. Here I am reminded of Andy Roberts who, having been asked how he was able to get balls to rear up and bite in spite of the wicket being dead famously replied: ?What have wickets got to do with fast bowling??

Quite apart from the cricket, of course, is the thrill of just being in the Oval, stumbling, break-time over outstretched legs, good-natured jibes of ?Fatman, yuh want tuh break mih foot,? finally reaching Leon and his grill, old-talk so good (I have friends whom, I swear to you I?d never see if the Oval didn?t have a match) that the only time you know the match re-start is when you hear that tell-tale roar, man out or some West Indian crack a flying four.

I know there are those who say they prefer to watch the game on TV in the relaxed comfort of their drawing-room but they are those who forget that even a 50-inch is no substitute for the real thing, which is not to bad-talk TV but to make the obvious point not only about atmosphere but about seeing the game in the round, and I dunno if is only me but I find there is a difference between the tell-tale thock of ball against bat and the one that is relayed a micro-second later to you in yuh drawers in front the set.

Guyana gone and now is Trini time and here?s hoping that for all the flam of Sachin, Chanders, Rahul and, of course Carl, West Indian cricket eyes ent see nutten yet.

* Keith Smith is editor-at-large of the Trinidad Express. His columns appear in that publication.