Silver drops and steel drums

Only the peanut man wears a smile. As rain stops every so often, only to return with renewed ferocity just two minutes later, the restlessness in Queen’s Park Oval is heading for critical mass. It seems only munching on peanuts will hush fidgetiness.

Which is not to say there is stillness all around. The music from the Trini Posse has been drowned by the steel band in the Learie Constantine Stand. As the hills up north send darker clouds, and raindrops become heavier, these energetic men and women are going at their steel drums with unwavering vigour.

Let the Americans try their tricks here, let them try to work their way through the Carib beer fortified hordes, go up to the musicians and state that they’d like to claim a patent on the steel band.

Folks in the Caribbeans cannot shirk off outrage over a recent American patent claim filed for this, the only musical invention of the 20th century. The Englishman, as a Rastaman evocatively puts it, banned the drum in the colonies, so people could not be rallied together with ease. So the people of Trinidad ingeniously gathered old biscuit tins—and later oil drums—to give life around some rhythm.

Often the orchestra entails as many and 160 steel drum and 100 drummers. The band in the stadium may be considerably smaller, but in volume they cannot be lacking. They will only stop in one eventuality. If, as in the Test match last month, local deity Brian Lara requests some calm.

Honours for uncles of West Indian cricket

It is a joyful, if unduly wet, day for two fans here in the Queen’s Park Oval. Uncle Lester and Peter Mathews will be honoured today for their devotion to West Indies cricket. The two men are familiar faces in cricketing venues around the world, they are integral members of the great West Indian cricket family, and today they will get special blazers from the West Indies Cricket Board as well lifetime passes.

Uncle Lester is more the veteran, he notched up his 113th Test at Sabina Park in Kingston last week. But fellow Trinidadian Peter is not a fresh initiate either, he’s been trotting from one stadium to another for 20 years, and says among his most cherished memories is that famous 1971 Test.

His transport business may finance this pastime, but his most abiding pursuit is infecting others with a passion for the funny old game.

Proof? At the Kensington Oval a friend, too conscientious to make it to the ground herself, told me I could easily spot him in the Three Ws Stand. “Peter is a Mervyn Dillon look alike—the same colouring, same build, and same gap-toothed smile. Look for a stack of about three chairs—he is always trying to keep seats for people!”

It’s an honour extremely well-deserved, you’d agree.

Phoren fans

Indian fans who’ve flown down from the US must cool their heels in the meantime and wonder whether they are jinxed. There they were, an estimated 2,000 of them, who arrived in Kingston just after the Test to take in two ODIs, but had to remain content with thronging the team hotel— checking out every nook and cranny, the gym, the breakfast room, the elevator, for any lurking cricketer, so a photograph could be clicked, a John Hancock affixed on tiny bats, and a handshake concluded.

In Bridgetown there was a lull, in Port of Spain, the Indian Diaspora is back in action. They’ve come prepared for battle—blue India shirts, fluttering Tricolours, colourful headgear, and oodles of war cries. But to the Trinidadian chorus still echoing they can offer no competition.

Calypso land in limbo

Is this the trouble with all multicultural, multi-religious societies, this profusion of public holidays? The party may have just begun at the Queen’s Park Oval, but it’s not exactly been toil and exertion the last couple of days for the people of Trinidad. Corpus Christi and Indian Arrival Day gave them a four-day weekend and not a worker stirred out to work, not in Internet kiosks, not in hotel business centres, not even in tiny corner stores. The business of life shall commence only on Monday in Calypso Land.