In praise of West Indies cricket and cricketers by Ramachandra Guha

On the last day of March, a friend of mine, temporarily in London, wandered into a pub. It was night in India, but afternoon in England, so there was just the odd drinker around. My friend persuaded the pub’s owner to switch the channel to Sky Sports, so that he could watch the World T20 semi-final.

The request was acceded to. My friend ordered a beer, sat down on a stool, and began watching the match. The customer next to him was an English lady in her thirties. “Who is India playing?” she asked. “West Indies,” was the answer. “Then West Indies will win,” she remarked, “my father told me they always do”.

The Englishwoman’s cricket-loving father would have grown up in the 1970s, when Clive Lloyd and his men made Tony Greig’s team grovel. He would have then followed, with a mixture of admiration and disgust, the ‘blackwashes’ of Botham, Gooch, Gower and company in the 1980s. Those were the memories the father still carried with him, and which he passed on to his (otherwise cricket-ignorant) daughter.
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zacaroni  should sue ramachandra for stealing his lovefest style of authorship tm

hhhmmmm....maybe its not trademarked  ;D

No one is predicting a return to the days of Garry Sobers and Viv Richards, but a beginning has been made. It would be a pity to waste the afterglow of the event; administrators and players need to bury the hatchet and work for the good of the game.