Trinidad is not really a tourist destination. This meant that when we went kayaking today it cost $8 and the other people there were all Trini teams training for upcoming dragonboat races.
The boat owners recommended that we head "down the islands" - these are five islands off the coast of Trinidad. We paddled and paddled but the islands never seemed to get much closer (although the boathouse did get smaller) - but we did get a good view of pelicans, jellyfish, and the aluminum plant (below).
Last Sunday, we went to our first cricket match. We decided to ease ourselves into cricket by opting to go to a three and a half hour Twenty 20 match rather than a 4? 5? day test match. How many days in a test match is the first of many unanswered questions. If you too have always been curious about cricket this blog entry will answer none of your questions. Among the first confusing element of the game was that the opposing team (Zimbabwe) was wearing bright red which is the color of Trinidad's flag - so for a long time we assumed the red team was the local team (the West Indian Windies) - but in fact the Windies are the team in maroon. You would think the cheers or jeers from the crowd (there were presumably no Zimbabwe fans there) would have alerted us to which team was which but seemingly not.
Cricket is played in Trinidad at the Queen's Park Cricket Club. This grand stand is named after Trinidad's national hero Brian Lara. Mr. Lara was a batsman and once scored 100 points in a game. Many things in Trinidad are named after him including a cancer center, a cemetary, parks, roads, etc. You would think he is dead but no he is alive and well and working as a party promoter - many Trinis will pay big money to party at his house. His most recent work was promoting the Beyonce concert here.
The Windies, which are considered the best (only?) example of pan-Caribbean cooperation play throughout the Caribbean and there are similar stadiums in Guyana, Barbados, Antigua and elsewhere. You can see lots of empty seats around us. Indeed only 3000 people turned out for the match in a stadium that I think seats 25,000.
At some points the game seemed sort of like baseball. Here the picture above is a batsman and how he plays seems a lot like a batter in baseball. The pitching is different, however, well first it is called bowling but it doesn't look at all like bowling - instead the "bowler" runs for the wind-up, then throws it before crossing a line and the ball bounces before the batsman hits it.
We believe that the orange sticks "wickets" are important but we weren't sure how or why. Possibly the bowler tries to knock them down and the batsman gets in trouble if he hits one while batting. This is probably where the phrase "sticky wicket" comes from.
Digicel one of the local cell phone companies sponsors the Windies and they gave away inflatable bats. As you can imagine these bats are excellent for hitting your siblings with (or so we observed.) Digicel also gave away paper fans that had a "4" on one side and a "6" on the other. There seem to be two different kinds of 'home runs' that earn you either 4 or 6. Other runs are worth 1 for each time you the batter can run between the two sets of wickets.
The Windies also had two cheerleading squads supporting them. I do not know if Cricket worldwide has cheerleaders. The cheerleaders in yellow are sponsored by Carib beer and the cheerleaders in red are sponsored by Digicel. During the (many) breaks in play the stadium played soca music from Carnival season. Again I suspect this is a Caribbean addition and perhaps not how it is played in Lord's cricket grounds. Anyone who is reading this and does know anything about cricket may wonder how people unable to identify their team would know about the hallowed cricket field in England - that is because I remember being shocked that Sabrina used valuable vacation time in England going to Lord's and that is when we all knew how much she must like Robert.
The Windies lost to Zimbabwe. This was considered fairly surprising because apparently Zimbabwe is not a good team. The next day we read the press coverage of the game. In the articles (for an example, see "Crap Cricket at its Lowest" here), a lot of attention was dedicated to "overs" these seemed kind of like "outs" - we did not pay attention to them during the game but reading the paper it seems like they are important. Again we do not know why. Subsequently, we have also tried asking assorted people for help understanding cricket - the accountant for the Embassy co-op, for instance, taught us that six balls are bowled in an over, and then he personally apologized for the Windies' poor performance. As we learn more we will share it with you.
