It was good to see a large crowd at the Kensington Oval for the first day of the Barbados Test, but a bit sad that such a large proportion of it seemed to be English supporters, many of them unwisely stripped to the waist. Television coverage can be misleading. I hope it was and that there were lots of home supporters there too.
I’ve never been to the West Indies, but I’ve always loved West Indian cricket – well, almost always for there were many days in their years of supremacy when their battery of fearsome fast bowlers went just a bit far, notably the Old Trafford Test in 1976 when, on the Saturday evening the England openers John Edrich (aged 39) and Brian Close (aged 45) withstood 14 overs of battering, in which more balls were aimed at the head than at the stumps. E W Swanton thought it was disgraceful – and Swanton himself was a lover of West Indian cricket.
