Olympism

The recently concluded test series between Bangladesh and the West Indies ended at the Queen’s Park, St George’s, Grenada, on Monday last in the most humiliating defeat yet to be registered in the annals of the region’s cricketing history.
Whatever happens in West Indies Cricket in the future would not possibly compensate for the colossal embarrassment of suffering a 2 – 0 series defeat at the hands of lowly-placed Bangladesh.
There are not many Cricketers alive or dead who would ever have imagined that the West Indies would have faltered so badly that a loss to Bangladesh was ever on the cards.
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In the very first test played at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 9 – 13 July 2009, the West Indies suffered an ignominious defeat, with Bangladesh winning only its second test in 60 matches since joining the list of test playing nations within the International Cricket Council (ICC).
While Bangladesh celebrates, regardless of the outcome of the next two matches in the series, the West Indian fans are particularly upset that the best team was not presented in the first match of the series and from all appearances, this is likely to be repeated in the second test, at least. Read the rest of this entry »

Many have pointed to the capacity of sport to facilitate unity among peoples of the world. Indeed, it is one of the principles of the founding fathers of the Olympic Movement that sport should engender harmony among peoples to the point where the world would eventually become united. The reality is that this has never happened and today we are as far away from achieving this as has been the case in the age of antiquity.
In the 1950s the Caribbean officially attempted the establishment of the West Indies Federation. The institution was seen as a mechanism to facilitate the unity of the region. Unfortunately, the leaders of the smaller islands of the Caribbean started Federation. Grenada’s TA Marryshow was from a small island. Jamaica read into the establishment of the Federation the hands of the smaller islands more generally and claimed via a national referendum that the union would have allowed these islands to prey on their economic fortunes thereby leading to the impoverishment of Jamaica. Nothing could be father from the truth. Jamaica and Jamaicans did not allow themselves the benefit of careful analysis of the reality that the Caribbean is made up of rocks that are far too populated and too short of valuable sustainable resources to sustain themselves individually and independently; that their overall, individual well being is inevitably intertwined with that of all of the others in the region unless an otherwise return to some variant of colonialism. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past several weeks the sporting world was filled with the excitement generated by 20/20 Cricket. From the very first day of the competition through to its grand finale the International Cricket Council’s 20/20 World Cup held in the land that created this particular variant of the game, England, cricket enthusiasts everywhere tuned in to the remarkable event.
But the excitement generated by the 20/20 tournament, which saw Pakistan defeat Sri Lanka in the final at Lords was not the only feature that attracted the attention of cricket enthusiasts. Aficionados of the sport were also engaged in an ongoing discourse as to the impact 20/20 would have on the longer version of the game, test cricket, and on the future of the sport itself.
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