Barbados: Truly Caribbean, purely cricket! Barbados turned on the gears to welcome the first Super 8 match at Barbados with a lot of West Indian zest, flavour, music, dance, stiltmen dancing high up in the air and beautiful women in their parade gear.
As they took an out procession with live drums and a lot of captivating music, Indian fans streamed into the Kensington Oval. Most of them are from America and will be doing at least two matches and then going into holiday mode on the beaches and salsa bars of Worthing in Barbados and in St Lucia where India plays the big one against Australia on June 24.
Take Meher. She lives and studies in Class 3 in Ohio and has just been crafted into cricket by her cricket-crazy parents Sunil and Pravleen. "I love King Kohli (Virat Kohli), play well for wife Anushka,” she says. She was one of the few lucky fans who saw Kohli at the next table at an upmarket Italian restaurant called Buzo.
The music comes with a lot of Caribbean culture here and with the West Indies playing good cricket after a long time, the public is interested. Though it is rare to see an India match in the knockout stages there are a lot of Bajan people populating them and they are all rooting for India.
The flavour of the stands floats in the party stands, going for USD200 comes replete with a splash pool, food and the very very heady rum punch on a bed of ice. It is a relief that cricket has finally started happening with a surround system that is not alien, that is warm and that has runs coming in.
"We are doing the India match today because my son Cyprian wanted to see how happening it can be," Nayoka Taitt, an Assistant manager in the Coral Mist Beach Hotel tells you. She has been busy catering to very Indian guests at her facility where the demand for vegetarian food has flummoxed the restaurant.
The Oval, meanwhile, is an icon in the Caribbean and had greats like Wesley Hall, Brian Lara and others introducing the match amid loud cheers and applause, not to mention calls by avid women fans, for Lara that is! For now, that gives sustenance, fun, frolic and meaning to the tournament which has been talking in the middle too.
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