“Hopefully, everything will be better in 2011”

Colin E. H. Croft

By Colin E. H. Croft

Hey, do not hold me accountable, but I can promise, right now, that 2011 will be better than all that has transpired in 2010. It must be. There is always hope for the future, with the proper enterprise. You can still change the future, even now. 2010 is croaked!
Happy New Year! Also, thanks for your inputs and comments for those articles in 2010!
For me to have survived the change to this new millennium, then this change to the 2nd decade of the millennium, is a major miracle. It was not easy, but we are all still here!
I started 2000 in New Zealand’s Auckland Harbour, looking at very expensive racing yachts of Americas’ Cup, while covering West Indies being beaten by New Zealand at cricket. If you remember, we were all in awe, waiting to be doomed at 00:00 – midnight 1999/2000, as the clocks, and computers, were supposed to have gone raving mad!
I have started 2011 looking at magnificent cricketers in Australia beating each other to a pulp! I predicted England would beat Australia 2-1, but the 5th Test is not done yet!
My best cricket games came very late in 2010. England v Australia “Ashes” reminds me of Muhammad Ali v Larry Homes, for the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship, in 1980, with Ali superimposed as Australia, fighting his very last real hurrah!
England can be Holmes, not fully undisputed ‘world heavyweight champeen’, but by beating a lethargic, decidedly aging Ali – my overall sporting hero of all time – Holmes at least showed his credibility for the future.
Australia now is also like West Indies of late 1990’s, finding out that talk does not win Tests. As they say ‘reality and age are bitches!”
India, No. 1 Test team, and South Africa, No. 2, are goring each other up badly too, duking it out – mano y mano – like Sugar Ray Leonard v Roberto Duran, also in 1980!.
Insomnia and sleep apnia will haunt us all until Easter next after these two series are done. Thanks to the cricket being played by these four teams, no-one sleeps at all! Geez!
My best events – match-ups – though, for 2010, were two-fold; soccer and motor-racing. The thrashing that Germany handed England (4-1) in FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa was, for me, unforgettable. I doubt that even “Der Kaiser”, Franz Beckenbauer, could have been better than Bastian Schweinsteiger was that day. He was magical!
To cement that feeling, “Schweini” outplayed Argentina next, with their mighty talisman Lionel Messi on board. Spain was just a game too far for the Germans, but, boy, were they brilliant in South Africa. Look out for a more mature Germany in Brazil 2014!
In passing, FIFA South Africa 2010 World Cup was a wonderful example of colour and mixes. I still have my vuvuzelas from Cape Town! What wonderful, magnificent noise!
While Grand Prix racing has lost much of its real delight for me, since the cars are more absolute mechanical marvels than the drivers being perhaps as skilled as past masters Niki Lauda, Ayerton Senna or Mario Andretti, I still enjoyed the to-the-end tussle between Red Bull’s German, Sebastian Vettel, and Ferrari’s Spaniard, Fernando Alonzo.
I am an Alonzo fan. After 19 races, each race lasting about two hours, each race averaging about 150 mph consistently, Alonzo lost to Vettel in the very last race, in Abu Dhabi, to lose the championship by 4 points. Those boys certainly earn their coin!
I was very fortunate to be at two events in 2010; Farnborough (UK) Air Show, where ever airplane imaginable is displayed and flown – you have to see the Airbus A-380 do a flying display to believe it – and to see the cars at the British Gran Prix at Silverstone. Love could not be more intoxicating. It was truly orgasmic stuff, the cars and airplanes!
Even with “Tiger” Woods hitting a tree inadvertently – that whole situation was funny and shambolic – only one other sporting event, in February last, took my fancy for 2010 – Super Bowl XLIV (44), at Miami’s Sun Life Stadium. The New Orleans Saints (formerly known as the New Orleans ‘Aints’) beat the Indianapolis Colts 31 – 17.
These were the same Saints that did not have a winning season for more than two decades, and whose home is the Louisiana Superdome, home of so many disaster stories of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Like Dracula, N-O Saints came back from the dead!
Now for the immediate future that is 2011 – cricket and more cricket – for the 1st part.
The Caribbean T-20 will start us off this week, then ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 in Asia (India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) from February to April, to be followed immediately by tours by Pakistan and India to the Caribbean; cricket in the region until mid-July next!
Guyana is the defending regional T-20 champion, but they will have a hard time this time. Trinidad & Tobago are still smarting from its elimination from what they call “their right” last year, while Jamaica and Leeward Islands shared the 50-over competition last year. I expect one of these, or Barbados, to win the Caribbean T-20 2011.
The West Indies Women have got to continue on their road to world supremacy. With the new contracts for some of the girls, I expect they would be even better than 2010, starting with their tour to India in January. These ladies have not peaked yet!
Especially West Indies Men’s senior team has to prove its worth this year. It is one thing to get all of the funding and allowances that contracts deliver, but quite another to show that they are not only there for the money. Patience everywhere in the area is very thin.
For ICC CWC 2011, West Indies have drawn South Africa, Netherlands, Bangladesh, Ireland, England and India in the preliminary games. Getting to Super 8’s will be tough!
Given the recent history; Netherlands beating England in the opening game of ICC WT-20 2009 in the UK, and Ireland proving time over time that they are a very good emerging team, beating teams like Bangladesh and Pakistan previously, none of these games will be push-overs for West Indies. They will have to work for any success got.
I expect that India, Sri Lanka or England will win ICC CWC 2011, but Australia and Pakistan could be dark horses too.
Personally, I plan to become the fittest “old guy” around! I did not indulge too much for the holidays 2010, so I will not have to work too hard there, but I have banned starch from my diet! Who knows, maybe I will get selected for WI Masters again!
The old knees, which have probably run more miles than the distance between Guyana and Jamaica in their lifetimes, are starting to tell me that I am not 28 anymore, but 58!
We shall see how that goes as we ascend Chancellor (Brian Lara’s) Hill, or run the beaches in Barbados, or pump the irons at La Joya Gym, or jog Guyana’s sea-wall!
Life is great. I plan to have an enjoyable, industrious, healthy 2011, with cricket, carnival, parenthood, mentorship, everything being equal! I hope you do too! Enjoy!