Carl’s mighty promise and the mightier disappointment

Leg side pull

By BC PIRES

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.