Windies batting disappointing overall

For years we had been hearing about moral victories and at last we saw one. This is not intended as an excuse for the fact that we said before the match that the South Africans would be given a lesson by the powerful batting of the West Indies.

The surprising revelation which came to us on this April afternoon was that a thing may be done well enough to make victory entirely secondary.

We have all heard, of course, of sport for sport’s sake but the West Indies team established a still more glamorous ideal. Sport for art’s sake was what he showed us in the big wooden saucer, two sons of the soil Brian Charles Lara fiery with the bat, but falling short of another double century in the most unfortunate of circumstances and Dwayne Bravo, bowling menacingly and like a young man possessed.

In the end, the tragedy was that neither man could achieve their ultimate goals.

It was the finest tragic performance in the lives of 90,000 persons.

Here for once was a laboratory demonstration of lift.

None of the crowds in Greece who went to somewhat more beautiful stadia in search of Euripides ever saw the tragedy more truly presented. And we will wager that Euripides was not able to lift his crowd up upon its hind legs into a concerted shout of " Medea ! Medea ! Medea!" As Brian Charles Lara and Dwayne Bravo moved the fans.

This was probably the most inspiring batting at the Queen’s Park Oval of all time. Personally we would go further back than that. We would not accept a ticket for David and Goliath as a substitute. We remember that in that instance the little man won, but it was a spectacle less fine in artistry from the fact that it was less true to life. The tradition that Jack goes up the beanstalk and kills his giant, and the Little Red Riding hood has the better of the wolf, and many other stories are limited in their inspirational quality by the fact that they are not true.

They are stories that man has invented to console himself on evenings for the fact that he is small and the universe is large.

Lara showed us something far more thrilling. All of us who watched him know now that man cannot beat down Fate, no matter how much his will may flame, but he can rock it back upon its heels when he puts all his heart and his shoulders into a blow.

Great circumstances produce great actors. History is largely concerned with arranging good entrances for people; and later exits not always quite as good.

And we knew for the first time that a man may smile and smile and be an underdog.

We resented at once the law of gravity, the Malthusian theory and the fact that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Overall the West Indies batting was disappointing, but Brian Lara got all the glory.

Perhaps we will have to enlarge our conception of tragedy, for that too is tragic.

The South African batting whilst not pretty was effective. The West Indies bowling while not penetrative was containing. The crowd whilst small enjoyed themselves. Yesterday was a day for cricket connoisseurs not for party enthusiasts so it was tough hard and at times compelling. A lot more is expected today but of cricket in the future then something needs to be done drastically soon to encourage spectators to attend. Graeme Smith’s century was not in the same class as that of Brian Charles Lara.

He (Graeme) is big and burly and unattractive, and his batting was the same yesterday. It was like attending a four hour Sunday service.

I am now going to ask Digicel for a phone, because the man I don’t trust says he has been trying to call me all day.