Evening Standard: 10 Jun 88

I had the odd experience this week of starting a Test Match in England and finishing it in Jamaica.

You could suffer this effect by standing up to a bumper from Malcolm Marshall, but I came out here in the conventional way, by aeroplane.

I arrived in an island hushed and deserted and my first thought was that the people were in their homes, glued to their TVs and radios, following the events at Trent Bridge the way people stayed in during the war for announcements from Winston Churchill.

I then realised that it was Sunday on an island more God fearing than our own.

But even on Monday, when play resumed, there was not the fervent conduct I had expected as Carl Hooper strolled towards a century and the total went above 400.

One reason for this, certainly in respect of the early play, is that to catch the ball by ball from the UK you have to get up at about 5 o'clock in the morning.

The dawn comes up in the Caribbean like the raising of the curtain on some particularly flashy opera-Aida, say. Nevertheless, it's as hard to be fervent in a tropical paradise at an hour like that as it would be in Birmingham.

Attitude

There is also an important factor to be taken into account here in relation to almost all activity undertaken before noon. It's called Appleton's Rum and the amount you drank the night before would affect your attitude even to the Second Coming if it took place early.

In this case, as the sun grew more ludicrously exuberant the score increased steadily, and moving among the populace, it was at last possible to gauge their attitude to what was taking place at Trent Bridge.

One way to do this was to walk down the road listening to a radio giving forth wafts of Brian Johnston, the equivalent of flying a Union Jack from your sun hat.

The effect of such a foray at that stage was to draw the kind of looks you might attract if you were heavily bandaged and on crutches, or moving very slowly behind a walking frame.

People regarded you with kindness and polite sympathy as if aware that one day something bad like that could happen to them.

The next day, as Gooch went relentlessly on, it seemed as though it had. But there was no resentment or petulance-more the attitude teachers take to pupils who have disappointed in the exams.

"This will wake they op a bit", an old man with a plastic shopping bag told me on a street corner. "Those West Indians, they arltogether too karn-fee-dent".

The plain fact seems to be, that so many years of winning has bred in the Windies the kind of attitude that millionaires have to money. Dropping a few noughts from the bank account is irritating, but doesn't affect the big picture, .