Take West Indies 7/2 to win 2nd Test

To distract myself from this uneasy vigil (.... the phone that never rings) and from the incessant drums, I light a cigar, open the horseracing papers and reflect: The Fearless One can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. And tomorrow isn’t looking good either. (Could it be the Fearless One is behaving like some West Indian Cricketers?)

Oh Yes! It is that time again — THE SATURDAY of a Test match, and I am already feeling excited. Saturday morning, with the adrenalin starting to flow, I dusted off my jeans, it is my cricket jeans, my ‘lucky’ jeans.

This year I was going to bring in a successful bet at 7/2 on the West Indies winning the second Test series at the Queens Park Oval.

All luck whether bad, good, indifferent or non-existing; have been achieved in these jeans, although cricket apart, I have had some luck without the jeans on.

The thing about these jeans, is that you have got to wear to understand just how significant it is. It is tight without being over-burdening, similar Government Tax. It is spacey, without being far apart, like my last winning bets. But seriously, like most of the Die-Hard fans seated in the Oval, I long to witness a West Indian victory at long odds in Trinidad.

The crowd that has gathered for Day two, came to visualise what everyone knew already, Brian Charles Lara , a man on a mission. This was a man who felt he had to do himself justice, and after watching from the Queens Park Oval (in between his continuous and energetic batting practice last week) at first Wavell Hinds and then Shivnarine Chanderpaul, both achieve double centuries, it was clear that — THE PRINCE — wanted to retain his crown.

Seems truly appropriate that TT’s PRINCE should be working at achieving his mission in life with his one true love — CRICKET, when another PRINCE in a land not so far away was also performing what has seemed his mission in life. To marry what everyone now thinks was and is his only true love.

As we told you in this column, he has goals, ten more Test centuries, he now has only nine left, he wanted 3,000 more runs, that also we have seen him reducing already in just one innings.

Anyway protruding from my dimly coloured (grey-blue-orange) jeans was a race programme for the Grand National at Aintree, this one could fold easily and rest snugly in your pants, quite unlike some other things I had on me.

There are a lot of people standing around, like wide-eyed tourists on a desolate beach, and interrupt or disrupt my easy access to the betting window or the parade ring.