Am I getting too old?
Am I getting too old for this? Should I even be burning up the planet with all these airmails? Do I feel a little bit guilty in these straightened times to admit that I am taking off for 4 weeks of sunshine? Actually it won’t all be sunshine because the last week will be spend in Toronto.
Possibly it’s just that traveling has got a hell of a lot more complicated and uncertain. It’s been a bit of a nightmare. As soon as the dates for the Tests were announced Steve was on the phone. We agreed on Barbados and Grenada and the next morning flights were booked. A few weeks later it started to go wrong. My internet provider stopped giving me free emails and I lost all the records I’ve ever had, including details of my flight bookings. Then Air Canada –don’t ask – cancelled my flight back to Toronto from Grenada which was great! – stranded in Grenada with a ticket to Heathrow from Toronto. In the end I’m flying back to Toronto on American Airlines but it means I have to have a few extra days in Grenada. But, hey, what’s not to like! Then I realise that my passport needs renewing. Of course, all my flights have my old passport number.
Am I making a big deal of all this? It got sorted in the end but how often did I lie awake at night wondering if Air Canada would take off without me from Heathrow?
And then, of course, there’s Covid
You wouldn’t believe how complicated it is. I’m flying to or through 5 different countries – Canada, Barbados, Grenada, US and UK. They each have their own rules … and the rules keep changing! And no government website anywhere in the world is user friendly. Jeff Bezos might be worth a trillion dollars but Amazon doesn’t half make it easy for you to do stuff. Canada has their ArriveCAN app. Barbados has BIMSAFE, which doesn’t work. The USA says you don’t need a visa but then makes you pay $14US for an ESTA – Electronic System for Travel Authorisation. How many times have I had to photograph and upload my passport and my Covid pass? Then I need a PSA test but I can’t take till the last minute, in Plymouth, on my way to Heathrow. Will I get it in time? And will it be negative? I did and it was … but, nightmare!
Nightmare at Toronto Pearson Airport – Sunday 13 March
Flying out of Heathrow to Toronto was easy. But numerous changes to what was originally a straightforward schedule to Barbados extended my stopover at Toronto from 3.30 on Sunday afternoon to 8.30 on Monday morning, 17 hours! I’m flying business class so at least I’ve got the lounge for a bit of comfort.
Just after nine in the evening, I settled into a reasonably comfortable armchair in the rather basic Air Canada lounge and nodded off. An hour later a voice woke me. ‘Excuse me, sir. The lounge is closing.’ Yes, indeed. It doesn’t stay open over night. Shit! I wandered down to the boarding gates looking for something comfortable. Toronto airport is like one of those big office blocks in London that put bumpy bits outside them to deter street sleepers. All, absolutely all, the chairs had arms on them so there was no way you could lie down. Plastic covered and short-backed, they weren’t designed for comfort.
I did the best I could. Sometimes I slept sideways with my backpack on the next chair for a pillow but god, my back when I woke. Sometimes I slept upright and then my poor neck. But somehow in fits and starts the night went by. I looked at my phone and it was 5am and the airport, which had been empty and silent all night apart from the constant replay of a public services announcement in English and French about the importance of wearing masks, was starting to come to life. I didn’t feel too bad. I had a coffee at one of those cafes where you order from QR Code reader. At 6.15 I returned to the Air Canada lounge. At eight thirty I am on board flight CA966 waiting to take off for Barbados.
Two right feet! – Monday 14 March
Steve met me at the airport which is literally 10 minutes walk from our digs. ‘I had a bit of a problem this morning,’ he said phlegmatically. His phone with all his cards and most of his cash had been removed from his back pack on the bus. I unpack and shower while Steve starts cancelling his cards and activating his spare phone. I take out my sandals.
One goes on my left foot which doesn’t feel right so I switch it to the right which was fine. But then the other one didn’t fit the left foot either. What an idiot! When I was packing I must have leafed out two sandals from different pairs. Tosser! Further evidence of geriatric decline. Steve lent me his spare flip-flops.
We set off for Pugs Bar which is a shack opposite the Airport. Pug is at the back where his wife is cooking fish steaks and macaroni pie which she serves in biodegradable plastic take-away boxes each with a plastic fork wrapped in a piece of kitchen towel. A television is playing Australian Women v the WI. No-one seems to be interested. Pug himself is not the friendliest but 4 bottles of Deputy beer cost $10Barbadan which is less than £1 a bottle. We drink on the decking at wooden tables painted red, black and white. When we get there it’s busy. The only table with any free seats has a London couple with their 22 year old daughter who have come to drink rum before boarding their BA flight back to Heathrow. The girl is being flirted with by a very witty young Bajan with dreds and a red t-shirt. They are absolutely wasted. We’re pleased when they stagger across the road and we are left with a Bajan clientele who laugh and cackle and call to each other in an accent that is incomprehensible.
Bridgetown – Tuesday 15 March
We have a day in Bridgetown – I need to get some sandals and Steve has to change some sterling. If you’ve been to the West Windies you’ll know that a bus ride is like Jenson Button on burners. They are little white mini-buses that are designed for a dozen passengers but if they can cram in more they will. As they pull up at a bus stop the guy who collects the money leaps off and starts ushering passengers onto the bus. Often he’ll disappear for a few minutes and goes peering down the side roads. He’ll return with a few more passengers. The idea is to pack as many in as possible. We had rides where women were sitting on their blokes’ knees. If the bus isn’t full you travel at a sedate pace to allow the conductor to hang out of the door calling to people on the road to see if they want a ride. But if it’s full, the driver, dreds down his back, hunches over the wheel and drives as fast as he can with the music blaring as loudly as possible. It’s not for the faint-hearted.
We are on the south coast well out of town where there are very few tourists and the road is quite clear. Houses here are often bungalows all with a porch and most with a bit of ground which is sometimes carefully tended but is often scruffy and neglected. Quite often there is a rooster and some hens scratching about. Some of the houses are wooden but most seem to be made of breeze blocks. The more prosperous have a second storey, usually with a balcony. On the more dilapidated places the paint has faded and the blocks are cracked and broken. Steve reckons these are owned by people working abroad who will return to them when they retire. But many, like the place we are staying at, are brightly painted in blues and yellows and greens.
As we get towards Oistins where the big fish market is we pass hotels on the seaward side and more and more tourists, many of whom are clearly here for the same purpose as us. The traffic slows to a crawl, passing the racecourse, where jockeys are exercising their horses, and the parliament building and the prime minister’s office, till we get into Bridgetown.
While Steve stood in the long queue in the bank I repaired to a bar with a balcony overlooking the street with the Nation, Barbados’s daily newspaper, reading about the budget presented the previous day to the Parliament by Mia Amor Mottley, their very impressive prime minister, she who recently declared Barbados a republic. Somehow between paragraphs I missed Steve coming out of the bank and he couldn’t find me. So after 5 bottles of Deputy and a plate of chicken wings and macaroni pie I cut my losses and took the bus back to Christ Church.
DAY 1 Wednesday 16 March: On a dead pitch
With population of 288,000 Barbados is not much bigger than Plymouth. Bridgetown with nearly 100,000 people dominates the island. Houses sprawl north, south and east away from the coast along bumpy tree lined avenues. We got into town at about half nine and followed the trickle of fans making their way to the ground. The centre of town trades on the tourists from the cruiser ships which are like massive hotels on water. We walk past duty free shops selling jewellery that most Bajans could never possibly buy.
‘We might be lucky and get in for the first ball,’ said Steve. No way. There was a melee of fans in queues of uncertain direction and with no apparent stewarding. We knew that Root had won the toss and that we were batting and at 10.15 some wag said, ‘Well, Lees is still in.’ Actually it was Crawley who was out first, for 0, a dismissal we didn’t see. It was a slow day’s cricket. The pitch was doing nothing, there was hardly an appeal and the ball wasn’t coming on to the bat. That should have been a recipe for a boring day but somehow we enjoyed it. May be just being here on tour after more than two years was enough. And the sunshine, of course.
By the time we got in Root had doubled Lees’s score. Lees took no risks and defended well but there was hardly a scoring stroke. By lunchtime it was 47 – 1. Someone said it was the third slowest morning session on record. Soon after lunch there was a muted appeal for lbw. Root went up to Lees. A brief discussion ended with Lees walking off. Clearly the captain told him he was out. Steve thought it was because Root wanted the score to move along.
Lawrence obliged. He drove the ball crisply and his timing seemed more assured than Root or Lees. He raced to 50 off 67 balls. Root was his usual serene self. Boundaries were hard to come by and the outfield was very slow but deftly placing the ball for ones and twos, sweeping very well and pulling balls for a single or two Root’s ton was inevitable. So too, you would have thought, was Lawrence’s. But in the last over he drove handsomely for two fours and then lamely lobbed a catch to Braithwaite in the covers and trudged off for 91, clearly furious with himself for that silly rush of blood. 244-3, England are clearly in a good position but is this a ground where they can force a result?
DAY 2 Thursday 17 March: Stokes is back
I was last here in 2003. An Australian team including Langer & Hayden, Ponting, Steve Waugh, Gilchrist, Lee and McGrath beat the West Indies who were captained by Brian Lara.
This was 4 years before the World Cup in 2007. By then the new Greenidge & Haynes and Worrell, Weekes and Walcott stands and the Media Centre had been built. In 2003 it was a ramshackle ground with rickety wooden stands but plenty of character. Now it’s modern, seats 10,000 and compares well with our grounds like Cardiff and Chester-le-Street.
The morning started with hilarity. The sight screen at the Malcom Marshall end wouldn’t change from advertising APEX, the match sponsors. We had the incongruous sight of Jason Holder banging on the panels to flip them over to blank.
After a circumspect start, Stokes got to work and entertained us to an aggressive 100 off 114 balls smashing 4 sixes, including a massive straight drive into the guttering of the Worrell, Weekes and Walcott stand. Root meanwhile brought up his ton, pushing and nudging singles to give Stokes the strike, clearly enjoying his mate’s return to his best form. He serenely passed 150 when Roach pegged him back lbw for 153.
Stokes continued the carnage with two violent sixes but perished on the boundary when he tried a third. Bairstow, Foakes and Woakes forced the score along. After tea at 507-9 Root had enough to declare on and waited to see how the Windies would fare on this deadest of wickets. In the end, thanks largely to Stokes’s aggressive brilliance England had pushed the score on at 3.35 an over.
Three very Yorkshire women got on the bus on the way in yesterday morning. When we got off Steve said, ‘Did you hear what those women were saying?’ Apparently they were the mother, grandmother and aunt of Matt Fisher, the Yorkshire seamer, who are here to see his debut in this match. According to them he was going to open the bowling. They weren’t disappointed. He came on from the Joel Garner end and with the second ball of his first over had Campbell caught behind. He wheeled away down to his colleagues absolutely delighted with his success. Mahmood, the other debutant, and Fisher looked good and with Leach keeping it tight and having a few played and misses we thought that the England attack looked more threatening than we had expected. But Braithwaite and Brooks took no risks. The West Indies ended the day on 71-1.
DAY 3 Friday 18 March: A slow old day
We had discovered on Day 1 that whereas it is easy to get cold beers at the bars in the ground, the queues for food were tediously long. So we have taken to bringing grub in with us. When we leave the bus in the centre of town and make the 20 minute walk to the ground we pass plenty of stalls with the best homemade West Indian food. Yesterday, I had pigs’ tails and macaroni pie, greasy but surprisingly meaty and very tasty. Today we bought saltfish bake, a West Indian classic in a bun, spicy and yummy. They cost very little and are delicious. The ladies who serve us are always cheerful and friendly. ‘You all a’right? Goin’ to da cricket?’
The day started with another remarkable bit of sight screen activity – this time at the Joel Garner end. Blackwood wanted it moved across. He was also distracted by the sunlight reflecting off the advertising boards. Today it was Ben Stokes who came to the fore, kicking the boards down and heaving the sight screen across! Er, groundsmen?
If yesterday’s play had sparkled with Stokes’s brutal brilliance, today was one of those when even those of us who appreciate ‘old-fashioned Test cricket’, to quote from a message Irish sent, wondered why we are spending the day watching bowling that lacks menace and batting that was purely intent on defence. It was hard to fault the tactics of the West Indies. Faced with a massive total they had to survive. The morning started with some hope when Brooks fell to Leach and Bonner was lbw to Stokes making it 101-3. But that was it. Braithwaite and Blackwood blocked and prodded and hardly played an attacking shot and England’s attack, which yesterday had shown some promise, lacked menace on this dead pitch against batsmen intent on defence. Oh for the pace of Wood! By lunch the West Indies were 114-3 having ground out only 43 runs all session.
At lunch we teamed up with Rob, PC Tom’s brother, and his Russian born German girlfriend, Anna, who was unimpressed with the morning, her previous Test match experience having been at Lords. Steve and I agreed that we would not have brought Hayley or Jennie along to a day like this.
Also at lunch were Kath and Ali, the Glastonbury Girls we’d met in Galle, whom we meet up with each day. Ali was disconcerted on Day 1 to discover that the prime object of the bag search is to confiscate cigarettes as there is a strict no smoking ban in the ground which is reinforced by regular announcements on the PA. Indeed, Barbados takes public health very seriously. Mask wearing is rigorously enforced. In the ground you won’t get served without one. On the buses I saw a Bajan who had let his mask slip below his nose being brusquely told by the conductor to cover up. In many shops you have to cleanse your hands, submit to a temperature gun and lower your mask to stare at a camera before they’ll let you in.
I’ve come across a few old faces. On Wednesday I met Clarkie who is looking well and still selling his excellent Corridor of Uncertainty. We were going to meet after the game but I couldn’t locate the right bar. Richard is in the Greenidge and Haynes with his floppy hat, score book and box of sandwiches. Posh Margaret too, who was by the entrance this morning welcoming people like a queen. After a big hug we barely had a chance to say anything when she stepped aside to greet her next subject. Sharon was with her. And today while I was waiting for Rob I had a chat with Smithie who is here with his wife.
Worrell, Weekes and Walcott Stand (Lords?)
By tea Braithwaite and Blackwood had reached their fifties but had only put on another 80 runs. Braithwaite then brought up his ton off 278 balls and Blackwood his at a slightly faster lick of 207 balls. Steve and I had had enough and left early for home and an evening of a lot of beers at Pugs.
DAY 4 Saturday 19 March: Escaping to Speightstown
It felt a bit of a betrayal but we decided on a leisurely start. However, the traffic into town was much easier because it was Saturday. There’d been a rain delay so we actually got there pretty soon after the start of play. They resumed on 288-4 Blackwood having fallen yesterday soon after we’d left to Lawrence’s whirling leg spin. The morning was enlivened by the antics of the ground staff during the brief squalls of rain which caused several delays. The sharpest man is the tubby sound engineer who is dressed in a black shirt and shorts and has a black satchel round his waist for the stump mikes. As soon as the umpires start to walking he races to the stumps with his little legs pumping and grabs the stump mike. He reaches the other end at the same time as the groundsmen who are pulling a massive tarpaulin to cover the wicket. Their technique is not great because it catches the wind and threatens to blow away.
By lunch Stokes had dismissed Joseph, the nightwatchman, but Braithwaite was still there, nudging his 150. They’d put on another 63 runs in a whole session. Steve and I had already agreed to review progress at lunch. It didn’t take much to decide that we weren’t staying. We checked in with Kath and Ali with whom we had a dinner date. We were catching the bus to Speightstown which is up the west coast past Payne’s Bay where they are staying. We’d meet them there at half five.
That was a good move. We caught a big bus quaintly called the Makiaveli which was driven as madly as any minibus. We wound through the pitted streets of Bridgetown and onto the coast road. The coast here is much more recently developed than our tattier southern road. As we passed though Holetown Steve was aghast at what the quaint little coastal village with a pier and a bar at the end that he remembered has become in the space of ten years. Large Disney-like hotels block any view of the sea. Fancy restaurants intermingle with expensive shops. There is even a flashy Ralph Lauren.
The development had thinned a little out by the time we got to Speightstown which has more the air of a little fishing port. There’s a line of more or less unpretentious bars along the front looking on to a fine bay of clear blue water and a few yachts. We found a couple of bars to relax in glancing from time to time at the cricket scores. Braithwaite was finally out for an epic 160 off 489 balls which had lasted 710 minutes. 400 of those balls were dots, 200 of them bowled by Leach. We didn’t feel we’d missed much. The Windies were finally out 411. Lees and Crawley were there at the close. England 40-0.
We hopped on a bus to Payne’s Bay and duly met up with Kath & Ali and their mate Jane for a meal and rather too many rums and ginger. Steve and I taxied it back to Christ Church. Steve said that the taxi driver’s observations on the dire state of the Bajan economy after Covid were interesting but I remember none of it as I slept the journey home.
DAY 5 Sunday 20 March: It wasn’t going to happen
Steve is going to St Lucia for a few days tomorrow. He’d worked out that he needs a Covid test to get there and had booked it yesterday for this morning. For some reason I had misread the Grenada instructions and thought I didn’t need one. This morning I realised that I did. Aggh! Can I get one today? A multitude of bad scenarios when through my head. The testing clinic was on the outskirts of Bridgetown. I sheepishly said to the very efficient receptionist that I needed a lateral flow test today. ‘You can have it now,’ she said. Relief! The doctor swirled the swab up a nostril and 15 minutes later we were both negative. Double relief!
You can’t say that England didn’t give it their best shot. As soon as Lees and Crawley brought up their 50 partnership every single England player went for it and each was out to an attacking shot. Braithwaite’s field settings were utterly defensive. In the end he had 8 players posted round the boundary. It was good that England were on the charge but it was hardly enthralling cricket. Lawrence top scored with 41. What would Root declare on? If it was to happen before lunch we’d reckoned 250 minimum, probably 270. In the end lunch came with England on 185-6 and Root pulled the plug. That set West Indies 281 to win in two sessions. Root admitted later that he could have been a bit braver with the declaration but I doubt it would have made any difference. In any case from the get go Braithwaite was intent only on staying there. There were moments of hope that kept us in our seats. At one point they were 39-3 thanks to Leach and Mahmood who was the pick of the seamers but it was an illusion.
Spirits rose after tea when Holder was out for a duck, caught by Lawrence off Leach who had been impressively accurate all match. At 93-5 was there still a chance? Root certainly tried. If Braithwaite had 8 fielders on the boundary at one point Root have 7 round the bat but to no avail. Da Silva, who was as aggressive as any of the Windies batsmen, and Braithwaite, who ended the day on 56 not out, saw out the last 15 overs and that was that.
On a dead pitch, with neither side having the pace to penetrate and a very defensive West Indian mindset, a draw was always the most likely outcome. Having said that, without Braithwaite’s extraordinary occupation of the crease, something like 11 hours and 653 balls, it might have been a different story. For us it is good have Stokes back at his violent best, Lawrence had a good game and Root of course was Root – sublime. Leach bowled his heart out and was pretty accurate and Mahmood impressed but Woakes and Fisher, one wicket apiece, are no substitute for Jimmy or Broad. Let’s hope that the Grenada pitch gives a bit more to the bowlers. See you there.
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