Latest update April 20th, 2024 12:04 AM
Aug 08, 2010 Sports
By Colin Croft
According to everyone, I should be celebrating, since Guyana won the inaugural Caribbean T-20, beating Barbados by one wicket, with one ball to spare. If you really like cricket, then you too should be celebrating, but there is much more to this story!
This last week saw the good, the bad and the ugly! In the excellent film of that same name, the 3rd of the “Dollars Trilogy” of early spaghetti westerns, after “A fistful of dollars”, and “For a few more dollars”, you will remember Lee Van Cleef – “The bad”, Eli Wallach – “The ugly” and, always our hero, the suave Clint Eastwood – “The good”!
Some more history here too! Because I have been professionally involved in sports, engineering and aviation, the last week have found me torn between cavorting wildly and just speculating as to what happens next? Good? Bad? Ugly?
So, firstly
“The bad!”
Also, note that ‘if you are not aware of your history, then, you may just repeat it!’
I wonder how many remember “Fat-Man” and “Little-Boy”? No, they were not the call names of fast bowlers or flashy batsmen, for some T-20 or Test team, though extremely brilliant these two certainly were. They also produced massive heat!
“F-M”, with 21 kilo-tons of TNT, and “L-B”, with 18 kilo-tons of TNT, were bombs – atomic bombs, to be exact – with very hot flashes, detonation, death, and absolute destruction so great that nothing similar has occurred since their first, and only, use.
On August 06, 1945 – “Little Boy” – and August 09, 1945 – “Fat Man” – were deployed, and exploded, over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, delivered by two huge Boeing B-29 Super-fortress airplanes – “Enola Gay” and “Bockstar”.
If you like, know, have experiences, or appreciation, in both engineering and aviation, these two occurrences were perhaps, collectively, one of the greatest human achievements ever, that rarest of culminations of the ultimate in technology, true know-how, determination, great skill, and certainly, disappointingly, massive opportunity.
The eventual death toll was unbelievable. The two bombs killed 200,000 people instantly. Think and assimilate that for a moment – ¼ of Guyana’s present population decimated in one practical flash. Many more tens; hundreds of thousands even; died afterwards from sympathetic blasts, ugly burns, or illnesses from the dispersed radiation.
Nowhere could withstand that. Japan surrendered immediately in WW-II. This experiment, though, put us fully on the way to all that is happening as regards nuclear weapons. No-one knows what will happen next anywhere either. In this context, the entire plan that was the Manhattan Project was, ever so deadly, even in war, “The bad.”
Now for
“The ugly”!
Depressingly, this was so overwhelmingly evident and visible this last week that the basic sour grapes do not even count. Some of the regions cricketers, so well heeled, sounded downright desperate, for, having tasted so much recent success, they seemingly cannot, perhaps will not, accept defeat. Straight, stark reality is a real killer!
Deviating pertinently, I admit to having two unique, lasting loves in literature, some prose learnt for GCE “O”s, at Central High School, in 1970/1, in G-T – “The Lotos Eaters” by Englishman Alfred Lord Tennyson, a poem that paraphrased the original “Lotus Eaters” by Odysseus, a Greek; and “Lysistrata”, by Aristopenes, another Greek.
“Lysistrata” is really a magnificent, comedic play. It shows how the determination of the human spirit works, and features the absolute withholding of sex, from their men, by the women-folk of the always warring armies of Greece, with the hope that the wars would cease. In almost next to no time, all swords and lances were downed! Watering stuff!
Some of the descriptions in this play would bring tears to your eyes, so read it soon. But, I will leave the assessment, digestion and thought for another future article; perhaps.
Ah, but “The Lotos (Lotus) Eaters”; now that is highly relevant for some of the cricketers of our region, especially those of Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados and even Jamaica too.
The play/poem suggests that the ultimate pleasure, derived from eating the fruit – actually a super-hallucinating, addictive drug – confuses reality absolutely, causing pining death.
Strangely, the only, singular time that the fruit actually tasted excellently was the first time it was consumed. Each subsequent consumption became ever more encompassing, with the associated pining for the sweetness, ambiance, peace; eventually, ultimate death!
Anyway, here are items of reality, in case anyone, including the cricketers of especially Trinidad & Tobago, and its sports scribes, and others, players and writers in the Caribbean alike, missed it. Please, whatever you do, do not be like the Lotus Eaters!
(a) Guyana won the initial Caribbean T-20 2010. (b) Guyana, after a few bumps, will travel, and play, in South Africa, in the CLT-20. (c) If Guyana wins the competition, or does not win any game, it is still the sole, yes, sole, representative from the Caribbean.
‘Like it, or lump it’; none of that will change, regardless if Dwayne Bravo, and I am sure, many others, say otherwise – “We (T&T) are the best T-20 team in the region.”
Yeah, right!
The only thing is; the best was beaten by the better-than-the-best – Guyana! Judging from the reactions, it must hurt; a lot. Oh, but for those danged Lotus; so sweet; so bitter!
What gives anyone the right to be so absolutely unrealistic; so supremely asinine?
Everyone enjoyed T&T representing the Caribbean last year.
Are these players now so intoxicated with foolish arrogance that they think that it is their right to always represent us? What the hell happens in their dressing room; brain washing, or perhaps Lotus Eating?
Scarily, these are the same people that some have been clamoring to be named West Indies team captains; players who do not believe, much less accept or understand, reality? Perhaps West Indies cricket is in a worse state than even I thought possible. Whoa!!
The Trinidad & Tobago cricket team looked ugly and complacent. Now, they sound ugly and stupid too.
I wonder if the best team in the Caribbean remembers that it dropped seven catches against Guyana. If that is the performance of the best, then I need some lotus too!
Or maybe, Trinidad & Tobago had been eating too much of that lotus? Ugly!!
So, finally, we come to “The good” of the Caribbean T-20 competition – Guyana – led, admirably and excellently, by Ramnaresh Sarwan.
Of course he made mistakes, but, in this case, the end justifies the means. Guyana was the only unbeaten team in the melee.
As they did in the inaugural Stanford T-20 in 2006/7, again the Guyanese were better than the best. Who says that history does not repeat itself. Guyana proved otherwise.
Especially Jonathan Foo, Christopher Barnwell, Travis Dowlin, Lennox Cush and the superlative Davendra Bishoo, showed that making noise, as Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago did, does not necessarily make sense! Guyana were too good!
So, now, even as some ply their trade in the CLT-20 for other alien teams, or remain at home, consuming that Lotus, you should hail your conquerors – “The Good” Guyana – as it tries to conquer the CLT-20 world. They may not do so, but who knows? Enjoy!
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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