West Indies visit triggers tales of 1969 and all that

CRICKET/Tuesday Column:A week of international cricket in Ireland begins with the West Indies playing the Netherlands at Clontarf today. There is a game a day in the quadrangular tournament, culminating in Ireland taking on the West Indies at the same ground on Saturday and then moving to Belfast to play Scotland on Sunday.

Whenever Ireland play West Indies, the story of 1969 hangs over proceedings, when Doug Goodwin's team bowled the visitors out for 25 at Sion Mills. Such a scoreline doesn't need embellishment, but part of the legend is the Windies team, fresh from the Lords Test, were plied with Guinness the night before.

This is not true, according to captain Goodwin, who points out that they didn't arrive until gone midnight on the evening before the game. The hotel restaurant was closed and the team got some food elsewhere before going to bed.

A point to note was the size of the crowd, numbered as over 2,000, bolstered by several hundred employees of Herdmans Mill, who were given the day off.

If the attendance on Saturday is of a similar size the ICU will be happy enough, after disappointing turnouts recently.

Looking at reports from the 1969 match the names of the visiting side are evocative of the glorious past of West Indies cricket. In the team were a young Clive Lloyd, stand-in skipper Basil Butcher, Joey Carew and the then manager, Clyde Walcott.

The presence of Walcott was a reminder of the past. The 1969 team was in transition between the three Ws era (Walcott, Frank Worrell, and Everton Weekes) and Lloyd's all conquering teams of the '70s and '80s. Something similar could be said of today's West Indies team, lacking as it does star quality. But the worry for those who have a high regard for cricket in the Caribbean is this is part of a long-term decline, recovery from which is more unlikely.

Back at home, Allen Stanford, the Antigua-based billionaire, has made an attempt at wresting control of the game from the West Indies Cricket Board. He has waved his chequebook and put $100 million on the table, mainly via his Stanford 20/20 inter-island tournament that caught local imaginations last year.

When I was in Guyana for the World Cup, many of the locals used the Stanford event to gauge what they saw as the failure of the official version. They told stories of the eerie quiet that descended on Georgetown as people sat in bars and in homes, glued to the TV, the silence occasionally punctuated by cries of "four" or to celebrate a wicket.

The excitement generated by the event was at odds with the oft-written notion cricket was dying of apathy across the islands. "It's what the World Cup could have been," said one returning Guyanese. If this is representative of opinion across the Caribbean, the challenge of Stanford to the board will take some defending.

Wright man is stepping down:

Cricket in Ireland owes a debt of thanks to John Wright, who announced this week he is to stand down as honorary secretary of the ICU at the next agm.

Since taking up the post in 1997, he has worked tirelessly for the benefit of the game. It's John and people like him who keep sport going, often for precious little thanks and no financial reward.

He has devoted himself to the hard, unglamorous stuff of sports administration: long meetings, endless chicken dinners and lobbying "here today, gone tomorrow" politicians, moving issues forward, sometimes inch by inch.

Many of the great moments of the last 10 years - the hosting of the ICC Trophy in 2005, qualification for the World Cup, the building of a cricket centre at North County, 8,000 people at Stormont for last year's England game - carry his fingerprints.

He managed to do all that with great charm and an infectious giggle. No mean feat.