Woo Hoo....Hmmm

Written by Jonathan Cumberbatch

Tuesday, 08 April 2008

For the first time since 2000, the Queen's Park Oval is pleased to provide a Windies Test win - after five successive losses. So paranoid has the WICB become that it is an open secret as to why the coming home series against Australia features no games here - this despite the fact that Trinidad remains the regional game's largest revenue base!

Showing a resolve absent from our collective game for most of the past decade, the West Indies held off a typically twirly Sri Lankan bowling charge to record their second Test win in five and ensure that the region remains without a home whitewash at least for another year.

Despite my tone above I shall not rain on this parade. A win's a win and two out of five against two senior opponents suggests something is happening.

I had not physically witnessed a home victory here since Australia unbelievably went down on Day 3 of the fateful 1995 tour so you can imagine my trippy mental state as I write. Funny enough, were it not for an umpiring error on Saturday, the parallel may have been complete. That's the Oval, bouncy yet the ball holds up, an A game is essential here or there she goes.

Still, what to make of it all. Saturday's stunning performance, epitomized by Marlon Samuels' 'play of the year' retrieval-and-run-out of Samaraweera, had everyone on cell phones to friends and/or rubbing their eyes (as well as keeping the scotch going if this was all a dream), so unrecognizable was this team display. Could John Dyson and Omar Khan be making such an impact so swiftly? Why can't this team hold it together for the length of a series? Questions 'birthin' more questions and it unfortunately illustrates the adverse impact the past decade of false hopes has wrought: we can no longer enjoy even a Test victory as purely as we once did.

Australia, as they often do, shall put an end to many of these voices in my head within the next two months, but until then let me learn to keep that Sunday smile on my face and dust off my 'broad-brimmer' for Saturday's ODI and join my office colleagues with this week's water-cooler convo refrain of "we win, we win"!

(Click here to know more about Jonathan)

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