Security around the West Indies cricket team’s dressing room was as tight as if the Pope himself were batting. The Barbados Cricket Association had earned my grudging respect: short of climbing over the fence of the Kensington Stand and making a mad dash for it, there was no way of getting into the Sir Garry Sobers Pavilion.
Not even Sir Garry could help.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” he smiled apologetically, “but that’s up to the West Indies Cricket Board.”
I thanked him glumly. It was the fourth day of the Third Test of the Cable & Wireless Series Australian tour of the West Indies and something major was going to happen in the match. The teams were tied one-all and within 24 hours Brian Lara and his merry men would either be getting drunk at the Boatyard bar in celebration, or they would be getting drunk at the Boatyard bar in despair.
I reckoned a great story would be to get into the players’ Pavilion and observe how they watched the match. West Indies were batting in the second innings with 223 runs to make on the final day. Win, lose or draw, the tension in the Pavilion would be pure theatre.
So I got myself a room at Club Rockley’s Resort where both teams were staying. I figured I’d see them at night after the matches and maybe during dinner I could sweet-talk Brian or maybe manager Clive Lloyd into letting me sit in the Pavilion.
Well that failed. Despite my best intentions, I was lured into liming at the Boatyard until they turned off the music at 4 a.m. every morning. It was all I could do to drag my hungover body to the Kensington Oval a few hours later. In the evening I rushed back to the hotel to see if I could catch the Windies chowing down. I don’t know where the rest of them ate but the only players I saw in the dining room were Curtly (who was preoccupied at the time; with whom I won’t say) and a few Australians who couldn’t help my cause.
Clive Lloyd let me down gently. Even he couldn’t let a reporter into the Windies dressing room. That was a Board decision.
Sigh. It was the fifth and final day of the match. A particularly hard night at the Boatyard kept me in bed until noon. Disloyal West Indian that I am (was!), I had expected the West Indies to collapse by 11 a.m. When two o’clock struck, Lara was still batting and the commentators were screaming in ecstasy. The West Indies were heading for impossible victory! Good God! I pelted on some clothes and grabbed a taxi to the Oval. If history was going to be made, I had to at least be able to say I was there.
I waded through excited men crammed at every entrance to every stand and made it to the press box where every West Indian journalist was hopping up and down, laptops abandoned. Even among the mostly stoic expressions of their Australian counterparts I spotted glimmers of excitement kept tightly in check.
And then, like Noah, I saw a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. There! A tripod, right next to the Sir Garry Sobers Pavilion. Heck, if
that photographer could get there, so could I.
I flew down the steps and ran around the stands. There was a woman standing by the door to the Pavilion. “Can I go in?” I begged shamelessly.
“No, you can’t!”
I stumbled outside, looking desperately round for another entrance. Just then, I saw a real photographer, big lens, multi-pocketed jacket and all, heading for the Pavilion. I crept up behind him. He flashed a press pass at the woman guard (who I suspect was really a cook hurriedly deputised when the real guard took off for a peep at the field).
I walked in right behind him, pretending to scramble for my own pass. “Why you didn’t tell me is that you is?” me woman scolded me. I just smiled sheepishly and hurried in behind the photographer. And there we were. Right in the Pavilion. Jimmy Adams sat two feet away from me, looking like his dog had died, face all scrunched up in frowning concentration as he watched Lara and Ambrose holding on for dear life to the match of the century.
I gazed around at Clive Lloyd, Rudi Webster, the team psychologist, and some new players I didn’t recognise. Hooper was nowhere around, Courtney no doubt reluctantly padding up inside the dressing room.
The dressing room! Dear God, I was ten feet away from the hallowed dressing room. I contemplated excusing myself past them all, slinking into the dressing room and hiding behind Jimmy’s locker. “Ohhhhh!” The groan was collective and painful. Curtly was out.
Not a good time for the dressing room bid. I clicked away at Jimmy’s distressed visage and Curtly, head bowed, plodding back to the Pavilion.
The tension mounted as the countdown began. Eight runs and West Indies would win the match. Three hundred and eight runs demanded by the Aussies after their second innings and the Windies were eight runs away from a win.
A glance to the right collided with Curtly’s behind. My eyes, shifted immediately and landed on his pads. He hadn’t bothered to take them off. He was leaning against the railing, clapping and shouting in his thick Antiguan accent across the field at Lara: “Come on, skipper! Keep going!”
Then Jimmy shot to his feet, smiling like his dog had been resurrected, yelling, “We cyah lose! We cyah lose!”
We were tied. One run.
That’s all WI needed. One run.
Clive Lloyd too was shaking hands around the pavilion. Ambrose gave Adams a hug and then climbed over the railing, ready to run on to the field.
I never saw the shot; just a flash of white as Ambrose launched himself off the railing and was gone. The pavilion emptied in a second as Adams ran “in socks” on to the field to hug Lara. I scrambled to focus my lens. Ambrose grabbed two stumps and turned, long arms flung out in triumph as he raced back to the pavilion.
Lara was being mobbed. I focused and refocused, my hands shaking.
And then I felt the whirring. No. No! The camera was rewinding, and I had no more film. Lara was being jostled towards the Pavilion, buried under hundreds of bodies pressing forward for a touch, a salute.
He made it to the pavilion on a wave of cheering West Indian humanity, passing two feet away from me and my now silent, useless camera, and into the dressing room.
The dressing room! I turned to join the surging wave but dozens of errant policemen had returned and were now cordoning off both sides of the Pavilion. I was trapped on the porch. On the other side of the low wall of the porch I could see the top of Jimmy’s bald head and hear shouts of joy.
I sighed. This was as close as I was going to get. I glanced down and saw the towel Jimmy had worn around his neck in a chair. I sat down gingerly in the chair, not daring to even touch the towel, and let my mind drift to the next match in Antigua, and a better game plan for getting into the Windies dressing room.
