Song for clay

Today I had the pleasure of talking to a Professor of Caribbean Studies for an hour or so about West Indies cricket. His understanding was so acute, his arguments so lucid that if the region's administrators had been in the room they may have emerged to find the path forwards illuminated a little more brightly.

The Prof is Guyanese, and as I left I asked him why their batsmen mark the crease by banging a bail into the ground.

'The land is Amazonian clay,' he said. 'There's very little sand. In the dry season, it's as hard as concrete. Most of them don't have spikes. They wear soft shoes. Banging the bail in is the only way you can make a mark in Amazonian clay'.

NB: He also gave me a copy of his latest book, which I look forward to.

The Stanford Non-Prison Experiment (i)

A fuller reflection on the weekend in Antigua once the Batsman has a tour of the papers tomorrow, but a couple of thoughts that might otherwise get trampled in the stampede:

i) Ravishing Rudi Koertzen referred a good-looking leg before shout from Steve Harmison to Steve Davis, the TV umpire. Davis checked it wasn't a no ball and then used the pitch tracker to establish that the ball landed marginally outside Chris Gayle's leg stump. It took about 35 seconds. The world did not end. 

ii) Stanford has essentially used his money to bypass the West Indies Cricket Board and set up his own team. They showed more unity than the real West Indies team has in two decades. Supposing an equally rich fella came along and sidelined the ECB? 

iii) There have been many late night pavilion discussions on who you might choose to bat for your life, if you had to. On Saturday night, it turned out, Chris Gayle was batting for his brother's. Gayle's $1m will pay for heart treatment. Cavalier Chris is not often top of any list of this kind, but as he said afterwards, 'my back is broad'. It was, it was.