It is only a game and, in the larger scheme of things, not very important. But mankind needs its diversions. And no other outdoor sport, and few endeavours of any kind, provides such lasting pleasures as cricket. Here the onlooker measures his satisfaction not merely in terms of results, but in the beauty of the spectacle.

All that counts in athletics is who wins and how fast. To football fans a goal is a goal no matter how the ball crosses the line. In baseball every home run swing is indistinguishable from the next. But cricket is a game of lingering memories, where how matters as much as how many and the end must be justified by the means. A thin edge through the slips can produce the same four runs as a perfectly timed straight drive, but never the same applause. A slow grafting hundred and a sparkling century in the same conditions are greeted very differently. They might sometimes make less runs, but stroke-players like Khanai are always held in higher esteem than accumulators like Boycott.

A batsman's unrivaled choice of action, like Cleopatra, allows an infinite variety which never cloys - a dancing, flourishing, extravagant sweep; the axelike authority of a grimly executed pull; a subtle and effortless leg glance as delicate as a young girl's cheeks; the pouncing hook of savage finality; a classical, flowing cover drive; the cavalier exuberance of a full-blooded square cut. In its finer moments, cricket transcends sport and enters the realm of the aesthethic, not so much a game as an art form; where good strokeplay is analyzed for correctness of form and virtuosity of performance. Beautiful, glorious, elegant, magnificent, graceful - such words might seem embarrassingly out of place in other games, but are a natural and familiar part of a cricket commentator's repertoire. Cricket, lovely cricket is the most appropriately evocative phrase in all of sport.

In a world of instant gratification, some scorn cricket as slow and old fashioned. But as Neville Cardus wrote, great music must have its slow movements. While all games produce flashes of brilliance and excitement, cricket alone provides sustained artistry. To aficionados who were not there, a great innings is like a lost work of art. One envies the eyewitnesses to Sober's 132 at Brisbane, Rowe's 302 at Kensington Barbados or Lara's 375 at the Antigua Recreation Ground. For the privileged onlookers, such performances are rare treasures; memories called up in moments of leisure, rolled around in the mind's eye and savoured for a lifetime. In Keat's words, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.

At its highest levels cricket requires the best qualities of grown men - patience, intelligence and courage. As a fast bowler races in, the batsman awaiting a hundred mile an hour missile must experience feelings vaguely similar to those of a soldier facing a bayonet charge. Cricket is not for the fainthearted. It is amusing to hear American fans of baseball, where balls are caught with gloves and a pitcher is penalized for even brushing the batter with the ball, talk of cricket as a sissy game!

Cricket is also the most democratic of sports. For men of all sizes are able to reach the game's highest echelons, from the five foot and a bit Ramahdins, Gavaskars and Laras, to the six foot and a lot Garners, Ambroses and McGraffs. Cricket remains primarily a game of skill, where the battle is not always to the large and strong, and the short and agile too have their say. Unlike say professional American basketball where very few players are less than six feet tall and anyone under six foot six and 250 pounds is considered small! It is too a game of gloriously uncertain moods - at one moment a chess-like spinning duel of craft and guile, at the next a brutal contest of power and speed.

Cricket is celebrated for its commitment to sportsmanship and has passed into the English language as a byword for fairplay. 'That's not cricket' is still used to describe unethical behaviour even in non-cricketing countries. Perhaps the term is a little old-fashioned today, but then, so is the concept. And have we anything to replace either? Maybe not all batsmen today 'walk' before being given out. But the ideal of the game, that a player's conduct should be determined primarily by his conscience, by the spirit and not the letter of the law, remains honoured more in the acceptance than the breach. The idea that individual integrity is more important than the game's result is not completely dead. And in what other sport do players admiringly applaud their opponents' outstanding performances?

Of course, to Jamaicans and West Indians, cricket is more than a game. (A phrase claimed by all sports but which originated about cricket. 'It's more than a game, it's an institution.' comes from Tom Brown's Schooldays.) No sport anywhere has played a more important role in the social life of a region than has cricket in the West Indies. As Clive Lloyd puts it ' Cricket is the ethos around which West Indian society revolves...it is the instrument of Caribbean cohesion.' C.L.R. James was undoubtedly correct in seeing cricket as a metaphor for West Indian cultural history.

Unpalatable as certain aspects may have been (all white captains for example), one judges a tree by its fruits. The smooth West Indian transition from dependent colonies to stable democracies is unparalleled, and the West Indies is one of the world's outstanding examples of racial harmony. Cricket can surely take some credit for these achievements. In the early 20th century it provided virtually the only arena where men of different races competed as full equals. White and black West Indians were playing together against their colonial masters a generation before a black man was allowed to play any major American sport.

Among sports, cricket demands a unique acceptance of authority. The occasional flare ups between umpires and players attract attention precisely because of this. They would go unnoticed in sports like football where officials are routinely spat upon and bodily attacked. There is a remarkable contrast between the unquestioned, judge-like respect accorded a cricket umpire and the abuse to which his baseball counterpart is commonly subjected. Are cricket's ingrained respect for authority, and the unswerving West Indian commitment to the principles of Westminster democracy somehow related? Comparing Jamaican political history and that of its nearest neighbours, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, more than one observer has answered yes.

The game still pervasively influences Jamaican society. During important matches all differences are forgotten in the common cause, and cricket has consistently produced excellent role models for our youth. Yet for all their onfield heroics, Michael Holding and Maurice Foster are perhaps making even greater contributions as commentators. All persons concerned by our failing educational system must find it heartening to see people glued to the radio during a test match. For when else do Jamaicans hear other Jamaicans using the English language correctly?

MY LAST TEST MATCH - 990310

British playwright Harold Pinter probably went over the top when he said “Cricket is the greatest thing God ever invented on earth. It’s certainly better than sex, though sex isn’t so bad itself”. But cricket to me has always seemed to present a broader stage for drama, to allow a greater canvas for artistic expression, and to encompass a wider range of emotions and moods than any other outdoor game.

Yet this weekend’s Sabina Park test match will probably be the last I ever attend. Sadly, cricket in Jamaica and the West Indies is a dying sport. Many reasons have been given for the string of dismal results which culminated in the previously unimaginable nadir of 51 all out - an incompetent board, parochial selectors, an arrogant captain, indisciplined players.  But the simple fact is that we are being beaten by teams with better batsmen, bowlers and fielders. The West Indies no longer contains enough good cricketers to field a competitive test side. It is just a matter of time before the West Indies become uncompetitive even with England and are deprived of test playing status.

The reckoning has been a long time coming. Youngsters in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean no longer play much cricket. A traveler will see a hundred football or basketball scrimmages for every pick up cricket match. Schoolboy football matches draw thousands to watch. At schoolboy cricket matches the players usually outnumber the spectators. Many  over say thirty still discuss and watch the game avidly on television, but even they don’t go much to games in person anymore.  But to most youngsters whelped on cable television, cricket is an unfamiliar game which they don’t understand or care much about.

Nowadays nothing which does not come on television matters. Basketball is on regularly during prime time and its constant action, frenetic athleticism and brilliantly marketed larger-than-life players have caught the imagination of our young. True it is utterly unreflective, offers rather limited possibilities of action and grows monotonous after a while. But then to uneducated youth these traits may serve rather to attract than repulse.

But the turning away from cricket to basketball and football is part of even larger social forces. Cricket is a rural game formed by the slower, gentler, subtler sensibilities of the countryside. Football and especially basketball are city games and Jamaica, like the rest of the world, has gradually become an urban society. Concrete driveways are in much greater supply than grassy fields in Kingston and Montego Bay. Nor can naked economic reality be ignored - a cricket bat costs a lot more than a basketball or football. Anyway, in a modern world demanding constant action, attention spans are short. Who has time these days for slow musical movements or epic poetry or leisurely contemplation or test matches?

The Jamaican and West Indian world view has also changed. When our horizons were bounded by Britain and the Commonwealth we could enthusiastically boast of the ‘world champion’ West Indies. But in the global age ‘world champion’ has a hollow ring without Europe or the USA taking part. You can see in the attitudes of the present team that representing the West Indies just doesn’t seem as important as it once did. After all Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz have been to the real World Cup, and names like Brazil, Japan and France made us realize the world is much bigger than England, Australia and India. Watching basketball it occurs that if all those tall athletic guys took up cricket they would make the West Indies four prong look pedestrian.

Those emotionally attached to the game and bewildered at seeing it wither naturally seek someone to blame. Which is why some attack Brian Lara so vociferously. But though his arrogance may have hastened the end, the issue is bigger than one man. Nothing can withstand an idea whose time has come, and nothing can save a sport whose era is ending.

So we are left only with memories – the guile of Gibbs, the speed of Holding, the artistry of Rowe, the power of Richards, the brilliance of Sobers. I have seen innumerable sporting contests live – Foreman versus Frazier, Pele at the National Stadium, Don Quarrie on the track – and countless others on television. But football goals and footrace winners and TV basketball dunks become lost in a jumbled confusion. Yet Gary Sober's 113 not out in 1968, Lawrence Rowes double immortal debut in 1972 and Brian Lara’s century against Pakistan in 1992 still stand out like jewels amidst cut glass. I can still see one particularly exquisite Lara straight drive off Wasim Akram which perfectly conjoined space, time and object. How sad to think I shall never look upon its like again and add no more such treasures to my mind’s eye.

Sad too to think the poetry of the cricket commentator will also be lost forever. How infinitely superior is “Lara rocks onto the backfoot and hooks gloriously to the square leg boundary for four.” to “Burton shoots. He scores. Goooaaal.” or “Pippen passes to Jordan who dunks.”

Cricket’s death will almost certainly mean the end of the idea of ‘West Indianism’. Test cricket after all is the only thing the widely spread former British Caribbean colonies truly have in common. It is the ethos around which West Indian society revolves and is the instrument of Caribbean cohesion. The few who have attended UWI apart, the term West Indies is virtually meaningless without cricket. But then the English Caribbean is becoming a de facto cultural and economic satellite of the United States, another apparently inevitable historical trend. At its best West Indian culture was uniquely tolerant, laughter loving, high spirited and wonderfully original – witness calypso and reggae. Its passing will leave the world a less joyous place.

Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse - Everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls.

MORE THAN A GAME - 990414

‘Only cricket unites the West Indies. To us it is more than just a game, it is a way of life.

Sir Frank Worrell

My conviction that cricket is the greatest sport ever invented by man or god was severely shaken by the massacre in South Africa. Each pathetic surrender only made it more obvious that cricket was dying both as a game and a West Indian cultural bond. Not even the players seemed to consider what they were doing important. They simply went through the motions like workmen earning an unhappy living.

The few remaining aficionados seemed motivated more by a sense of duty than pleasure in the game. “Cricket is part of our heritage” these diehards would mumble in an effort to justify another sleepless night of ritual humiliation. I had given up watching, but still felt the pain of each gutless collapse. Former cricket fan friends would laugh at my despondency. We cricket lovers were masochists! American football, basketball and soccer were so much more exciting and colourful. Cricket, especially test cricket, was yesterday’s news. Get a life!

The 51 all out at the Queens Park Oval convinced me too. Why should I care when the players obviously didn’t? But there is no escape from primeval passions. I tried to sublimate the despair of watching a beloved game die in an article entitled “My Last Test Match’ expressing my blackest fears about the sport’s future. Surely cricket was just another game. Why should a mature adult get upset about its apparently terminal decline?  Something’s won and something’s lost in living every day.

We have all been proven delightfully wrong. March 30, 1999 at Kensington Oval demonstrated to the entire West Indies and a world-wide television audience that cricket is more than just the greatest sport on earth. It is a dramatic spectacle, perhaps even a minor art form, and an irreplaceable part of the West Indian psyche.

Whatever the politically correct may say, South Africa’s apartheid past made those defeats especially bitter. Each thrashing by these former white supremacists further aroused not quite dead doubts about character, courage and mental toughness. Beneath the oft repeated “The talent is there but not the application” one sensed the unspoken thought – “They have strong bodies, but weak brains”.

Which is why the third test was more than a game, and will, in CLR James’ famous words, resonate beyond the boundary. The West Indies redeemed the self-image of the entire region. It is not that they won. Had the team lost by a run instead of winning by a wicket the joy may not have been as great, but the pride they inspired would have been no less. Finally when pressed to the wall they fought back nobly as men.

Brian Lara could not have led the team to victory without the efforts of Adams, Walsh, Campbell, Jacobs and Ambrose. All responded to the repeated challenges of 424 for 4, 98 for 6, and 258 for 8 with bravery and resolution. For all Lara’s glory, my abiding memory of that unforgettable last day will always be Courtney Walsh’s gritted teeth as he took guard. His was the determined look of a man prepared to exceed his physical limitations and conquer with pure will.

No praise is too high for Brian Lara’s incomparable 153 not out. Gary Sobers at his best never played a greater innings, and what finer compliment can one give? Lara had come to be seen not just as a symbol of West Indian cricketing decline, but as the embodiment of what was wrong with the West Indian male. Blessed with the once in a generation, God-given talent of a true artist, he appeared to have squandered it in arrogance and indiscipline. Cricket scorners, and they were legion after South Africa, would taunt the remaining faithful by pointing out what a role model Michael Jordan was in comparison to this egotistic wastrel.

Lara redeemed himself on that unforgettable Sunday at Sabina in an innings which the London Times termed “arguably the most important in the history of the game”. At Kensington he went beyond even that and proved himself not just a supremely gifted athlete, but a man of patience, courage and tenacity. Here was the true heart of champion. As Clive Lloyd said "It was the stuff of genius. You dream of watching innings like those.”

Cricket also crowned itself with glory. No one who watched this test could feel they had merely witnessed another sporting contest. The unfolding five days of drama, the twists and turns of the final day and the utterly unbelievable climax of the last hour proved to all that cricket at its best transcends mere sport and borders on art. Yet not even the most shameless pot-boiling hack would have dared to concoct such ridiculously implausible melodrama. Here was the true stuff of legend which old men in their dotage fondly remember and smile to think how fortunate they were see it.

What paltry football or basketball game could ever compare to this grandeur? Only a test match could combine such breathless anticipation and extended celebration of the moment  with sublime artistry and sustained drama unfolded on a raw emotional canvas of national pride. This was one of the greatest matches ever played, but only West Indian spectators could have created the rapturous atmosphere of unbridled exhilaration that made this surely the most memorable sporting experience ever witnessed in the Caribbean or anywhere else. O how envied are those who were there in person!

I am a believer again, not only in cricket, but in the West Indies. What a marvelous people! What a unique genius for extracting the full gladness of life’s joyous moments and sharing it with others! Like Falstaff, West Indians are not only entertaining in themselves, they are the cause of entertainment in others, as the visiting Australian fans can testify. What a tragedy if such an astonishing culture were to be buried by the mass materialism of McDonalds and Cable TV. But after Kensington Oval, I no longer despair of its future, or of cricket’s. They are too beautiful for us to allow them to die.

CRICKET - DYING OR BEING MURDERED? - 000117

For those of us who grew up on the game, it is painful to even contemplate the thought. But any honest observer of the West Indies’ abysmal capitulation to New Zealand must ask the question. Is cricket in Jamaica and the West Indies dying?

Worrying signs of decay abound. Once it was common to see young boys playing cricket. Now it is as rare a sight as a guava tree. A few years ago regional games were avidly followed by the public – thousands were turned away at the sold out 1990 limited overs final at Sabina Park. Nowadays not even free admission can get spectators into Sabina for anything but a test match. This year the Busta Cup is not even being carried on radio. Even the West Indies players sometimes seem unconvinced that what they are doing is of any real importance. In South Africa and New Zealand they merely went through the motions like uninterested workmen earning an unhappy living.

Those emotionally attached to the game and bewildered at its withering naturally seek someone to blame, and the captain is a natural target. “Only relieve Brian Lara of the captaincy”, many proclaim, “and all will be well!” But that is wishful thinking - Walsh’s team in Pakistan did no better. Lara is merely an unfortunate man in the wrong place at the wrong time. In retrospect only his heroic efforts prevented further humiliation on the last Australian tour. He averaged over 90 in the tests and no one else more than 30. But Lara, overweight and unfit like many team mates, seems a victim of the general malaise and is able to raise his game only sporadically.

What has caused cricket’s demise? Cable television is likely the chief culprit. Television is unquestionably the dominant social force in today’s world, and to most people, especially the young, nothing which is not on TV regularly matters. Which is why basketball, on constantly during prime time, is the game of choice for so many youngsters.

But the turning away from cricket to basketball and football is part of larger changes. Cricket has always especially appealed to the gentler sensibilities of the countryside. Football and particularly basketball are city games, and the modern world is primarily an urban one. Grassy fields are in short supply in Kingston, Portmore and Montego Bay. But concrete driveways are everywhere. Then too in our ever more rushed era of constant gratification, who has time for the leisurely contemplation which cricket, or poetry for that matter, requires?

Yet many think this is not the whole story. Yes they say, the world has changed and cricket is no longer the overwhelming focus of interest that it once was in West Indian society. But it still passionately loved by millions in the region, and still remains the most beautiful game on earth. To them cricket is not so much dying as being murdered by incompetent administrators.

And they may be right. The lowest point in West Indies cricket history was not the New Zealand whitewash, South African massacre or 51 all out at Queens Park. It was the moment at Sabina Park when, for the first time ever, a test match was called off because of an unplayable pitch. If the Cassandra like predictions are indeed fulfilled and cricket in the West Indies does dwindle into a minor sport like hockey, future historians will surely pinpoint this as the moment when the irrevocable decline began.

For there the West Indian and Jamaican Cricket Boards revealed themselves to the watching world as fatuous and incompetent profilers. No one stepped forward to accept the blame - it was as if the pitch had self-destructed. Some administrators even petulantly denied there was any problem and blamed the umpires for stopping the game, despite unanimous agreement among commentators like Michael Holding that their decision was correct.

The ineptitude and lack of shame displayed by the WICB put a nail in the coffin of a game already experiencing trouble by alienating fans, players and sponsors. Even those who disliked cricket as a game used to respect it as an institution of intelligence, honour and integrity. But the behaviour of the WICB and JCB was utterly disgraceful. Who can respect men who not only refuse to accept responsibility for mistakes but try to put the blame on others? Can anyone admire a game which allows persons so bereft of common decency to dictate its future?

Tony Becca, Jamaica’s most knowledgeable cricket writer, maintains that the seeds of the present decline were sown in the days of four prong glory, when players were pampered and their indiscipline ignored. And he puts the blame on the highest authorities, because only those with ultimate power can maintain order. “There is nothing wrong with West Indies cricket which strong, decisive action at all levels cannot cure. But do those in cricket have the guts to do what must be done?”

Mr. Becca is right, but on present form there is little hope for the future. The regional boards have done virtually nothing to address the most pressing problem in West Indies cricket today, the reality that fewer and fewer youngsters are playing the game. If no boys play cricket today, there certainly will be no men playing it in ten years.

One big factor here is that cricket equipment is very expensive. A bat alone costs over $3,000. Stumps, balls, pads and gloves mean it costs $10,000 just to start a game. No wonder football and basketball are so much more popular with the young. One ball, often free in a promotion, and they’re off.

But a low cost way of attracting youngsters to the game is Kwik cricket, widely popular in Australia and England. Kwik Cricket sets, comprising two bats, two balls, two stumps and bases, cost only about £50 in England. Made of plastic, the sets are rugged and durable, and never have to be replaced.

The West Indian Cricket Boards should make it a priority to get Kwik Cricket sets into every school in the region, and should encourage sponsors to make them available at subsidized costs to interested parents and children. But despite being prompted many times by interested fans to institute such a program, nothing has been done.

Sir Frank Worrell once said that ‘Only cricket unites the West Indies. To us it is more than just a game, it is a way of life.” Is this way of life then to be lost forever? If those in charge continue to do nothing, it surely will be.

A DYING CULTURE - 001204

“What do they know of cricket who only cricket know? West Indians crowding to Tests bring with them the whole past history and future hopes of the islands.” CLR James. Beyond A Boundary

What happens to a culture when its strongest unifying force dies? The English speaking Caribbean may be about to find out. After the recent string of humiliating defeats we have to face the reality that West Indian cricket may be dying. All the excuses in the world cannot hide the basic reality - the West Indies no longer contains enough good cricketers to field a competitive test side. If things continue as they have the Australian tour might have to be called off for lack of competition. Sponsors are already preparing to desert the sinking ship.

Few in the West Indies would complain if this happened. All ears and eyes used to be glued to TVs and radios when the Windies were playing. Now when a test match is on we cringe when passing a TV for fear of accidentally glimpsing the latest disgrace.

In retrospect perhaps only the heroics of Brian Lara last year postponed the final reckoning. If not for his Sabina Park double century we might have witnessed the last rights then. And in future years that memorable day might well come to represent a last stand of the West Indian identity against American television pop culture.

Cricket has always been more than a game to West Indians, and its demise would mean the passing of a way of life. Apart from the University of the West Indies – which touches only a small minority - cricket really is the only thing the English speaking Caribbean has in common. Not one in twenty Jamaicans know who Basdeo Pandeo or Samuel Hinds or Owen Arthur are. (I confess – I had to look up the Prime Minister of Guyana.) But we all identify with Brian Lara, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Sherwin Campbell. In a few years there might be nothing linking Jamaica to Trinidad, Guyana and Barbados but memories and they might mean as little to us as the Bahamas. And if the idea of West Indianness is lost, how long before our sense of Jamaicanness also goes?

As a rural sport in an urban world cricket has been fighting an uphill battle for people’s hearts and minds for a long time. Football has long been more popular among the masses. Some say the Reggae Boys can take the place of the West Indies. But football is a game of narrow nationalism and the immediate moment. It does not strengthen cultural bonds or lend itself to reflective history. It is difficult to imagine a footballing “Beyond The Boundary” that at once captures the essence of a game and a society.

But football always left a space in the national psyche for cricket. The game’s irrevocable decline – at least in Jamaica – probably started in 1992 or so with the coming of cable TV and basketball. The Jordan and Olajuwon people saw in their living room every night soon became more real than a Walsh or Ambrose they saw a few times a year. Most young Jamaican boys are now more comfortable with a basketball than a bat and ball. In places like Portmore – the largest community in the country – there is a basketball hoop on every corner, and cricket is an unfamiliar sport which occasionally comes on TV but which few actually play. What was once more than a game has in a way become less than one, for it has lost its spontaneous appeal.

But cricket is not the only aspect of our national identity being undermined by cable TV and the American pop culture it pumps out 24-7. The proliferation of fast food restaurants has in many places made authentic Jamaican cuisine an almost niche market. Kentucky chicken probably outsells jerk in Jamaica today. Of course nowadays most of what is called jerk consists merely of grilled chicken or pork with pepper sauce on the side. That uniquely hot and sweetish ‘season to the bone’ pimento flavour is becoming as rare as street cricket.

Even reggae’s days may be numbered. Before Black Entertainment Television rap had almost no following in Jamaica. Now it seems to be more popular among young people than dancehall. The natural authenticity that made Jamaican music so popular world-wide has given way to an aping of TV hip hop culture. The dancehall used to produce new stars every year. But we have not seen a true guaranteed ‘dance rammer’ since Bounty Killa and Beenie Man came on the scene over five years ago. And stagnancy is a sure sign of decline.

Whatever its lack of subtly, dancehall music used to have a genuine flavour of indigenous exuberance. Now it is virtually indistinguishable from rap, except for the deejays’ Jamaican accents. And even then, they are sounding and acting more and more like ‘Yankees’, because that is what sells in the cross over market.

Yet all this may be the ranting of a soon to be middle aged crank. To those who did not grow up in it the new fast-food, basketball and rap culture may appear superficial and unsatisfying. But the young who know nothing else seem perfectly happy with it.

It is not as if cable TV is an entirely or even primarily bad influence. Does anyone really long for the days of only JBC and its endless repeats of tile making documentaries? The greater variety of available shows has made children far more informed and aware than they used to be. Studies abroad show that IQ scores have consistently gotten higher over the past fifty years, and some say this is because television constantly exposes youngsters to more varied stimuli at an earlier age.

People love to complain about today’s rushed and confusing world. But how many who use one regularly would give up that arch villain of speed and complication – the computer? Perhaps it is only natural in the instant e-mail age that people should forsake the ritualistic contemplation of cricket for the immediate gratification of basketball. So what if the internet turns us – and the whole world - all into quasi-Americans? Will it not in the long run also make us healthier and wealthier? And is it not a choice we are all willingly making? After all, nobody is forcing these cultural changes on us.

My mind sees the logic in all of this. Something’s lost and something’s gained in living everyday. Nothing endures but change. “You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you” Heraclitus said over 2,500 years ago. But still my heart grieves for West Indies cricket, convinced that something irreplaceable is being lost. One of life’s joys may soon be gone forever. Ah well. Wha fe do.