Rainy spells must be kept in mind while scheduling cricket fixtures, said the chief of the West Indies cricket board, Wes Hall, while assessing the losses incurred for the abandoned Jamaica one-dayers. And as we hit the last stretch of this long Caribbean tour, it’s to the skies we must turn once again. “You’ve brought the clouds with you,” said a Barabadian as the two teams disembarked in Bridgetown on Monday. And the CNN weather desk confirms that that’s how it will stay for the rest of the week: “Partly cloudy. The Kensington Oval has never been a happy hunting ground for India. In 1997, they played their fourth and last One-day international here, and were comfortably defeated by the hosts for the loss of no wickets, and more than five overs to spare. TEAMS India: (from) Saurav Ganguly (captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V V S Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Mohd Kaif, Ajay Ratra, Ajit Agarkar, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Tinu Yohannan, Murali Kartik West Indies: (from) Carl Hooper (captain), Chris Gayle, W Hinds, R Sarwan, B Lara, S Chanderpaul, Ridley Jacobs, M Dillon, Cameron Cuffy, P Collins, C Collymore, Gareth Breese, Ryan Hinds The two highest scorers on that May Day, Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja, are no longer in the reckoning, but India are taking immense comfort from their batting line-up. The infusion of Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Mongia and possibly Mohammed Kaif, they hope, could make up for Saurav Ganguly’s current bout of food poisoning and reverse the momentum if they walk off victorious in what is now in effect the first ODI of the series. And this is a ground of many firsts. Originally christened the Pickwick Cricket Club, this ground hosted the first English touring team in the West Indies in 1895, a West Indies and an official MCC squad clashed here first (in 1911), it hosted the first Test in the West Indies in 1930. Don’t seek many monuments dating back to that time, though, as most of the stands were reconstructed after a devastating fire. But do seek tributes to the three Ws — Worrell, Weekes and Walcott. This island — waved off sniffily in the rest of the Caribbean for its denizens’ stiff upper lip — is said to have produced more world-class cricketers as a percentage of the population than any other region around the globe.
