Tomorrow, England play the West Indies in the first of three One Day Internationals in Antigua. Even accounting for the post-Ashes intrigue, it is hard to imagine there will be much of a crowd. Which takes me back to the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
Thursday March 29, 2007, to be precise. For a third consecutive day, thanks to the rain that took West Indies versus Australia into a second day, my mate Raoul and I are sitting in the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium. The previous day, in the aftermath of the 2007 Cricket World Cup touching down in Antigua for the first time, the local rag, The Daily Observer, claimed on its front page that “cricket-goers at the spanking new ground were certain . . . that the venue is the region’s most beautiful.” Never let the facts get in the way of the truth. There was precious little beauty on offer – with each day the crowds had got thinner, the cricket more one-sided. I could accept Australia drubbing the Windies, but today the hosts have been bundled out by New Zealand for 177. And now Darren Powell and Dwayne Smith – Dwayne Smith – are opening the bowling for the West Indies, following in the illustrious footsteps of Roberts and Holding, Garner and Marshall, Ambrose and Walsh. It dawns on me that I am twenty years too late.
I know, I know, I don’t expect much sympathy. I’ve left behind a freezing British winter to spend three weeks on an island with a beach for every day of the year. Only a cricket fan – and especially a cricket fan of my age, perhaps one, like me, who took his first steps on a cricket field under a replica Richie Richardson sun hat – could understand my bitter disappointment. Growing up in the 1980s, the West Indies were not only the best team. They were the coolest, too. Who knows who would win between them and the great Australian team that followed, but I know who I’d want to win. The effortless cool and swagger of Greenidge, Richards and Marshall, or the boorishness of Hayden, Steve Waugh and Warne? And a Caribbean tour always sounded so cool on Test Match Special, the lilt of Tony Cozier and Donna Simmonds, the sound of a conch shell. A World Cup in the Caribbean would be too good to miss. Wouldn’t it?
Almost a month later and the World Cup is finally all over. Appropriately it finishes farcically in the dark with Australia the inevitable winners. It has been a long procession, the final taking place on the 47th day of a tournament that used up most of its drama quota on Day 5. While Ireland and Bangladesh progressing at the expense of India and Pakistan was a good thing for cricket, it was not good for the rest of the tournament. As an inadvertent advert for the advent of Twenty20 the 2007 Cricket World Cup has been a triumph. In every other respect it has been an over-long, under-competitive disaster. Sure, it could have been better, richer for having a vibrant host team, but what is even more unforgivable – and for this, the ICC have to shoulder the blame – is that the tournament could have been more West Indian.
The games in Antigua could certainly have been more Antiguan. Returning to that copy of The Daily Observer, one has to turn to page 18 for something more like the truth. Cricket Lacked Antiguan Atmosphere, Says Sir Viv. Take the ground, the Chinese-built Sir Vivian Richards Stadium – so unbefitting of the great man, and such a contrast to the Antigua Recreation Ground. Two days prior to the Australia game, we had wandered into the Rec, in the heart of St John’s. Sitting in the welcome shade of the stand with a saltfish and avocado baguette, Marlon Samuels smacking the ball out of the ground, Brian Lara doing some catching practise just below us, I let my imagination run. After all, this was the place of Viv’s 56-ball hundred and Lara’s twin peaks of 375 and 400 not out. This rickety old ground must have been some place to be when the Windies were dishing out some licks, Chickie’s Disco blaring and Gravy leading the celebrations.
There’s no wandering to the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, and no running for your imagination when you get there. It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s in Antigua, but it could be anywhere. It’s an ICC enclave with its own overly-officious border patrol. It wasn’t just the prohibitive ticket pricing that kept locals away (£75 to get in sounds a lot me, and I could afford to watch a lacklustre team with no representation from the Leeward Islands at a ground I didn’t want). They had read the small print. Or enough of it to get the picture: essentially, nothing could be taken into the ground that could instead be bought at inflated prices from official ICC vendors inside. No local customs would get through ICC customs.
What else but money could explain such control-freakery? The ICC might point to that mantra of our post-911 times, Health and Safety, but it hides their true motivation. What is so frustrating is that it seems so unnecessary. Surely the ICC generate enough money through TV rights. I imagine the money made at the ground is peanuts in comparison. Not peanuts to the good folk of Antigua, however, and it’s criminal that the ICC doesn’t give them a sniff of the action. The Roti King would have made a killing. Given that the TV rights would presumably be worth a lot more if the product was better, if there was better cricket in front of better crowds, surely all this self-serving greed is ultimately self-defeating. And even if you don’t agree with that theory, shouldn’t the needs of players and fans alike come first?
Some times, less is more. Why not have fewer, more meaningful, games? Why not revamp The Rec? Why not make it affordable for locals? Why not trust fans to behave and enjoy the cricket? Isn’t cricket that most civilised of games? Aren’t the fans equally so? Who needs a Party Stand? All the ICC have to do is provide the cricket. We’ll do the rest. It doesn’t have to be so contrived, so sanitised, so joyless.
It might be of little comfort, but perhaps the ICC got the tournament it deserved. There is a certain irony in India crashing out early of a tournament bloated by demand from advertising executives keen to exploit the Indian TV market.
The good folk of Antigua didn’t get the cricket ground they deserved, however. Two years after the World Cup, that particular white elephant wasn’t even fit to host a Test match. The Test against England was abandoned after ten balls, a 366th beach having replaced the bowler’s run-ups. According to Mike Selvey in Monday’s Guardian, the subsequent transfer of the Test to the Rec was a “triumph of community organisation.” Shame the same couldn’t be said of the World Cup.