The 1990s, the Queen’s Park Oval, West Indies playing – India, if memory serves, but mine is more likely to spit in my soup – and Carl Hooper slid down the wicket, like a cobra on cocaine, to lift some poor sap – Anil Kumble? – back over, first his head, then long-off’s, then ours in the press box, which fell silent, everyone listening for the ball crashing onto the roof, except we did not hear it: either it was caught unseen on the top tier of the then Republic Bank Youth Stand or the ball cleared the peaked media building roof, sailed across St Clair Avenue and landed unheard in the grass of then King George V (now Nelson Mandela) Park.
It might have been the stroke that inspired the young Kieron Pollard, today’s hardest hitter, whom I like to imagine sitting that day, open-mouthed, in the Schoolboy’s Stand; but however far anyone hits the ball, no one, then or since, could match Carl’s careless, flowing grace in that accelerated, unpredictable glide down the wicket. Australian spin legend Shane Warne even when he too was hit clear out of the ballpark, publicly admired the athletic elegance of the man his captain Steve Waugh included in his 100 Best Cricketers list.
The Oval crowd, which back then knew a bit more about cricket and a bit less about how to get on TV by wearing
