It was a pity that this year’s Limacol Caribbean Premier League (CPL) had to come to such an unsatisfactory conclusion last Sunday. But it was not the first time that farce has descended on the final of a major tournament in the West Indies, with that of the 2007 ICC World Cup being played out in near darkness most vivid in fans’ memories. The result of the latter match was never really in doubt though, unlike the CPL final between the Barbados Tridents and the Guyana Amazon Warriors, which was hanging in the balance when rain and the match officials intervened.
It is a matter of considerable irony that T20, the shortest and supposedly perfect format – albeit with the great game reduced to its basics, shorn of all subtlety and intricacy in the interest of instant gratification and entertainment – is still not immune to the vagaries of the weather, the opacity of regulations, the uncertainty of officials and the arcane calculations of the Duckworth/Lewis method. But don’t blame the weather or Messrs Duckworth and Lewis for spoiling the fun.
Surely, if the idea of T20 is to remove the draws, inconclusive outcomes and the type of pointless encounters the uninitiated associate with the longer versions of the game, then the CPL final should have been completed once the rain had stopped and playing conditions were acceptable – which they were. The night was young and the full-house crowd was in party mode and looking forward to an exciting finish. They, the television viewers and the players (apart from the Tridents who lacked the grace to be embarrassed by their accidental victory) were badly let down by the controversy which followed. All the available evidence would seem to point to imperfect tournament rules and administrative confusion.
Last year, Trinidadian cricket journalist Garth Wattley dubbed the inaugural Limacol CPL the “people’s festival,” noting that, “with the right packaging, people will come, and keep coming.” This year, he has noted that the competition “faced the challenge of meeting the high expectations raised by the first year in 2013, and of improving on the product.” The “anti-climax” of the final apart, Mr Wattley gives the 2014 Limacol CPL “a passing grade” and, notwithstanding last Sunday’s fiasco, the public response throughout the tournament would seem to confirm that the CPL and T20 are here to stay.
More’s the pity, the purists would say, but they appear to be a dwindling number in the region. Lovers of Test cricket in the West Indies are an endangered species, to judge by attendance figures at Test matches in the region, and they probably do not matter to the marketing men of T20, who most likely consider them dinosaurs in an age of rapid change.
The purists are, in all likelihood, mostly older men, left cold by the bling and hype of T20 and who deplore the accompanying change in players’ attitudes, with sledging increasingly seen as an acceptable even welcome addition to the carnival atmosphere. These are serious students of the game who see young batting talents, such as Trinidad’s Adrian Barath, ruined by the slam-bam mentality of T20. These are more likely than not proud nationalists who find it hard to support a team bearing their country’s name – consider, for example, the Guyana Amazon Warriors which boasted only three Guyanese in the final and was led by a Trinidadian. Even if franchises are the way of the future, a better balance should be found to preserve the national identity of teams.
Views such as these, even if in the minority and even if considered hidebound, should not necessarily be ignored. These purists – almost a dirty word nowadays – may seek refuge in the past, but they serve to remind us that, even though change is inevitable, there may be merit in some old-fashioned values. And in their love for the virtues of Test cricket, with all its glorious uncertainties, tactical shifts, prolonged periods of tension and, after five days’ hard play, still capable of nail-biting climaxes, they remind us of the beauty of sport played at the highest level, in all its dimensions – aesthetic, cerebral, technical, explosive and even brutal – and of what we, as West Indians, were once capable, when we not only had the brilliance and power but also the discipline, application and consistency to rule the world.
