Identity games

The CPL's effect on West Indianness has been deeper than anyone imagined

My father called me up late one Saturday morning to ask if I was watching the IPL match that was coming live from India. It was not on my radar. I was running errands, and I had taken to catching the repeats at night on account of my day job. He was disappointed because the game had been so exciting, he just wanted to share his experience with someone.

Daddy has been tuning in to T20 cricket since the Caribbean Premier League started three years ago. After he had turned away in disgust from West Indies Test cricket, he'd never really paid attention to the shorter forms of the game, not even in his retirement; but then he was never as much a cricket fan as my brothers and I were.

When the CPL came along in 2013 it drew me in, and as my surviving brother was not within reach, when a match excited me, I would phone my father just to share the experience. He would not have been watching, so I would tell him what station he could find it on, and eventually it collared him too. He now loves T20 cricket - more than Tests - and when the West Indies teams won the 2016 World T20 in April, he was the first person I called. To be honest, I never thought I would describe my father as a cricket fan. My mother for sure, but he had always seemed a take-it-or leave-it kind of spectator. T20 cricket changed that.

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