Two things you should know about me: one is that I’m Guyanese from head to toe. My father came here as a young child from Portugal, and my mother’s parents came from there, but Portugal is just another part of the world to me; there is no special connection; I have no desire whatsoever to go there. The place that stirs me or calls me, and sometimes distresses me, is Guyana. The second thing is that in my heart, not always my head, I am a Caribbean man, and the songs I’ve written over the years reflect that – that’s my lens – and so I’m a follower of what we call the West Indies Cricket Team. However, I’m not a blind follower; for instance, I’m not jumping up and down in ecstasy when, as recently, we defeat a team such as Ireland and we’re carrying on as if we’ve just conquered the Goliath of cricket. (I get the philosophy of “we beat whom we meet”, but come on, people…Ireland?)
One salient point to make about West Indies cricket is that the name is a bit of misnomer because it suggests when we play the other cricket nations (India, South Africa, England, etc) that the West Indies is a country or a nation, and I’ve noticed in a recent international series the promotions referred to our team as the “West Indies Cricket Board” which, realistically, is truly what it is. Considering the cabal of nations making up the team, with no national flag or anthem, not to mention T-shirt or souvenirs, the comedian in me suggests that we should probably change the name to “Dem Boys”, you know, make it colloquial, a kind of cultural thing, in line with the current buzz phrase of “cultural economy.” Every country in the Caribbean would relate instantly to that tag – it’s actually how many of us refer to the team now – and the print media would have a field day with it. As we lose to India the headline would be “India Curries Dem Boys”; in Australia, “Dem Boys Fall Down Under”; and if we beat England (how I wish) papers would say, “Dem Boys Turn Limeys Sour.”
In a serious vein, however, solving our cricket problems will take more than a name change as the recent re-election of David Cameron to head the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) demonstrated. Only days before that election, SportsMax television carried an interview with Jamaican Pat Rousseau who was president of the WICB from 1996 to 2001. Rousseau, who is a
