India clinch one-day series

You could say his interest in the game — though not his spirits — revived soon enough. As Ridley Jacobs assisted by the tail, almost heeding his calls of “play it straight” and his articulate gestures seeking hits towards the Cyril L. Duprey Stand ahead, lofted the ball for a six now and sneaked through a trickle of twos and boundaries. Till Jacobs perished to Ajit Agarkar. The scoreboard read 184/8, Mr Brown Hat finally, after a long and talkative vigil through rain and blazing sun, averted his gaze from the field, and a rainbow appeared.

But the pot of gold at its end, however, had India’s name embossed on it.

It’s been a well-fought victory for India. They put their noses to the ground and stuck to the task. There was little flamboyance, there was no star, it was a bits and pieces conquest. They had come racing into the Queen’s Park Oval on Saturday, believing the one-day series was in the pocket. The brown-and-white trophy demanded a little more application, plenty more fight… today they arrived here suitably chastened and were, well, suitably rewarded.

This is a big win for India. It is that rare commodity, a win abroad. There’s that. It is also a relief. As coach John Wright said later, “After losing the Test series, if we had come away (from the West Indies) with nothing, it would have been a bitter pill to swallow.” There’s that too. But victory had a brighter glow that the sum of those sparkles. For this last and decisive one-dayer, however, had most of the ingredients of a memorable game of cricket: grit, tests of character, drama, and that so very eclectic blend of performance and happenstance.

In the end, stillness won.

A decibel graph could so eloquently convey the tempo of the game. Once India lost the first tie here at the Queen’s Park Oval, Tendulkar’s participation in this last and decisive ODI was always a certainty, inflamed shoulder pain or not. It was a quiet knock from him, but it still alerted these thousands into an uncharacteristic hush. You just had to stroll around the stands to find that all eyes were on Tendulkar, in this land of a million commentators they had it all figured out.

Especially when Pedro Collins charged in. (In Antigua, they had at one point quipped, “Collins got Tendulkar out thrice? He must think he’s Jesus, man!”) “Well bowled, Pedro,” they muttered, echoing Mr BH, “middle and leg, boy, middle and leg.” A staccato 65 it may have been, but that today could well be Tendulkar’s day, they sensed that he could steer India to victory, or see the team struggle to pull off a series win. So when he was bowled by local boy Merv Dillon, they blew kisses to small clusters of Indian supporters, but shook their heads _ that wicket should have come much earlier, they worried.

This is what a visitor to the Caribbean must take away with him or her… this smooth, holistic appreciation of life, this instinctive going with the flow. They know when to leap out of their seats and do a little jig, they know when to sit still and savour a special moment. And they always, but always, appreciate a good shot, a committed dive in the outfield, no matter who it benefits, no matter whether it comes in a winning situation or not.

In contrast there was that roar. You would have thought he had just cracked six sixes in an over. That deafening applause would certainly have entitled you to reckon that something dramatic had just transpired out in the middle in Queen’s Park Oval. It was simply local hero Brian Lara scrambling to and fro for a couple.

After India set the hosts a target of 261, after rain delays altered that to 248 in 44 overs, they were not be shaken in their belief that Lara could swing anything. All tourist guides to Port of Spain are agreed that any walkabout of the city must begin at a promenade named after him, and this capacity crowd wanted all reports about this two-month India-West Indies series to conclude with paeans about his exploits.

Lara, however, was not his customary self yet. He tried to graft together a semblance of a significant innings. Just as Sachin Tendulkar did with success earlier in the morning. With little success.

Another day awaits him and his feisty teammates, when the Kiwis come calling. But for the Indian bandwagon it’s time to bid goodbye. To these stadia where echoes of memorable games can still be heard, to these beautiful islands where a cosmopolitan culture has been forged _ but most of all to these hospitable, lively, informed spectators who prevent cricket from sliding into a slam-bang contest between bat and ball.