If you’re a young fan of the red-ball game, or even a recent convert, footage from one long-ago series would help explain precisely why it’s called Test cricket. Australia’s tour of the Caribbean in April-May 1995, the series in which nearly two decades of West Indian dominance was finally ended.
Even now, the ferocity of some of the fast bowling is startling. As is the quality of the batsmanship. The Waugh twins at Sabina Park in the final Test, Steve with 200 and Mark with 126, and a 231-run partnership that would change the course of cricket history. Australia would win by an innings, but the scorecard doesn’t tell you how tough the Waughs had to be against Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and the Benjamins (unrelated) – Kenny and Winston. There is a famous photograph of a topless Steve after the innings – his torso looking like a large piece of moldy cheese, with blotches of blue and black all over. After a while, you just lost count of the number of times the ball thudded into gloves, thigh pad, hips, ribs and chest.
It was the ultimate test of both skill and courage, and it’s not without reason that the 200 is considered one of the great innings of the modern age. But as you watch the old videos, what you also notice is the bedlam in the stands. The crowd was heaving, and you wouldn’t even need pictures to tell you what you were watching. The steel bands and the atmosphere were so utterly unique, so very Caribbean.
Because Australia won the series, the third and penultimate Test in Trinidad has been relegated to the footnotes. It shouldn’t be. While each of the Caribbean grounds had its claim to fame, the Queen Park Oval was the supreme party venue, with its Calypsos, carnival queens and relentless buzz. Even the sun seemed to shine brighter.
It was there that West Indies, smarting after criticism from the local media, skittled Australia for 128 and 105 on their way to a series-levelling nine-wicket victory. These years later, if you ask Steve Waugh about the greatest innings he played, he will always mention the 63 not out in the first innings in Trinidad, on a grass-tinged pitch he called “diabolical”. The contest with Ambrose, enraged after Waugh swore at him – to hide his fear, he would say later – was Test cricket at its finest, two practitioners at their peak going at each other like a raging bull and a matador.
Why this long detour down Memory Lane? To begin with, if you watched the first session of the West Indies-India Test match at the Queens Park Oval on Thursday, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that it was a nondescript first-class match being played in some forgotten stadium somewhere. A band played, but with the once-packed stands almost empty, what was meant to be celebratory seemed forlorn. As for the real-time Calypsos and carnival queens, they left the building years ago. This famous venue is a shell of what it once was, much like West Indies cricket itself.
The Caribbean now has the CPL, with Trinidad one of the outposts of the Knight Riders franchise. These are also hard times for the region. The Arcelor Mittal steel plant, which was one of the biggest employers on the island, shut shop in March 2016, and the reserves of oil and natural gas are half of what they once were. The empty stands reflect people’s priorities in such harsh times.
But the audience aren’t fools either. In the decade and a half since Brian Lara bid adieu to international cricket, Trinidad has produced three stars who were feted across the world. Dwayne Bravo played the last of his 40 Tests in 2010. Sunil Narine hasn’t played one since 2013. And Kieron Pollard never did. Without going into the why, it’s enough to say that it’s silly to expect fans to hand over hard-earned money if the headline acts are absent.
Kemar Roach, Alzarri Joseph, and Shannon Gabriel aren’t a bad group of fast bowlers. But after sending India in to bat, the opening session was about as testing as a pillow fight. Yashasvi Jaiswal’s dismissive swat for six in the opening half-hour kind of summed things up. There was no lack of effort from the bowlers, but the famous Fire in Babylon was nowhere to be seen.
An older fan, who had clearly seen many better days, blew into a conch as play resumed after lunch. It could have been a cry for help, or an elegy for the glory that once was.