Let's all join together and wish the The West Indies cricket team all the best today as they play against Pakistan in the opening match of the World Cup Cricket competition at our very own Sabana Park in Kingston.

I think every Treasure Beach cricket fan is there today!!

Rebecca,
I'm in the new Northern Stand. Just saw a huge six by Dwayne Smith!
We needed it. Touch and go. The guys were a bit nervous at the start, I think.
Huge, colourful crowd in attendance.
This is work and pleasure, for me. Not a bad combination!

Good day Rebecca is there a site that i could watch the World Cup Cricket live?

I just got a phone call from Earl rubbing it in that he is there and I am listening to the match on my radio. Oh, it sounds noisy and wonderful! Earl promised us a full report later.

Touch and go right now with Pakistan batting 48 for 3. West Indies batted in 241 for 9 wickets.

Fingers crossed!!

Just checked in with Silvan James - who you know must be there - he says we have a chance!

20 overs gone with 63 for 3.

Come on Windies!!!!

99 for 4 with 28 overs gone! Another wicket just gone! One of the best Pakistani batsman gone!!

Go Windies!!!!

71 for 3 off 22 overs. Not bad going, but these two batsmen are Pakistan's best.

We therefore must get at least one of them out soon!

BBC has a page with links to listen to the game:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/6441789.stm

Earl just got his wish, both batsman gone!!

As I'm typing the score is changing. 32 overs 116 for 6!!!!!!!!!!!!

125 for 6 35 overs!!!!!!!

7 wickets gone!!!

We are not quite there yet, but it would take something crazy for us to lose this one.

Then again, we have managed to achieve such crazies in the past!

No goat mouth, though. I do believe we are home - Pakistan requires 58 runs from 24 balls.

Well, I'm getting out of the commentary box, to capture the excitement when the final wicket falls.

West Indies has won by 54 runs....way to go Windies

Yippie!!!!! 187 all out with the last two ducks!! Doesn't get any sweeter than this!!!!!!

Congrats Windies!!!!!!!!!

Now if I only understood a word of that other than West Indies won....LOL

See you soon

I am now basking in the memory of a special day!

Great play by play Rebecca,

you add another hat to the many you wear, your're the best!!

Bless,

- True North

Wow! Congratulations! to the Windies! You might take the Cup of us yet.
Does anyone know where to get tickets for Jamaican World Cup games as I shall be there in April and would love to be at a game, especially if Australia plays in the semi-finals on April 24.
Would like to know details like cost of basic tickets, where to buy once I reach Ja...
Thanks...

Nice headline news.

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070314/lead/lead1.html

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sports/html/20070313T200000-0500_120337_OBS_SUPER B_START__.asp

Everyone still smiling and celebrating this morning.

Aussiegirl,

You might be out of luck re the semi-final match in Jamaica, in April.

The tickets for that match have reportedly been sold out already.

Take a look at this excerpt from a story in today's Gleaner:

"If you have not yet purchased your ticket for an International Cricket Council World Cup match at Sabina Park, downtown Kingston, you may still be in luck, as, except for the semi-final match on April 24, tickets are still available.

Delroy Taylor, project officer in charge of ticketing, said that periodically, sponsors who have bought tickets would send a few back into the system. Tickets may be purchased at the perimeter box office, located at the south gate entrance, off North Street, next to Sabina Park.

For other matches at Sabina, excluding the semi-final, tickets are also available and may be bought at the ticketing office, shop 51 and 52, Kingston Mall, Ocean Boulevard, downtown Kingston."

........

(My comment)There is still a small hope, however, that some persons/ corporations might return their tickets for re-sale.

"HOME TEAM WINS" wonderful front page,lead article with Dwayne Smith embracing Cory Collymore in the beautiful W.I. colours in the Miami Herald today......MiamiHerald.com

Boy Rebecca, who knew you would become such a cricket connoisseur...Did you ever think you would know about wickets and overs, silly mid-off and silly mid-on, ducks, licking six and maiden overs? You sound like a real pro.

You are so right Ms. Todd. I blame/credit all my cricket knowledge on Silvan James and the Treasure Girls. As I was jumping up and down cheering on the Windies yesterday it did flash through my mind that I was not at all excited about the Super Bowl. . . Guess I am a Jamaican fi true now!

Thank you Earl for letting me know;
OO, might have to wing this one; Maybe tb will have to put up with a enthusiastic Aussie, cheering and dancing about whilst listening to the semi-final on April 24, on the radio.
I wonder if there is a number to call the ticket outlets mentioned in the article?
Bless,

What happen Rebecca...no postings on todays match. I just saw Gayle lik three big six out of the park.

Unfortunately, Gayle got out shortly after hitting those three huge sixes.
It was not a clinical performance by the Windies, but good enough to guarantee their advance to the second round. They have their final group stage match against Ireland on Friday, and, with the Irish around, it is sure to be a festive affair!
Then it will be on to the more serious business of qualifying for the semi-finals.
The crowd at today's match was quite good and gave all who attended a really good feeling.
There was a minute's silence at the start of proceedings in honour of the memory of Bob Woolmer, the coach of Pakistan, who died the morning after his team's loss to Ireland.
The cause of death has not yet been determined, but, as of now, foul play is not suspected. The autopsy might be held tomorrow (Tuesday.
Woolmer's passing has put a slight damper on proceedings, but not enough to spoil the World Cup.

Sorry Ms.Todd. I was on the road all day yesterday. But you can bet I was listening to the match on the car radio and catching a peek at it every time I stopped somewhere, as every shop, bar, store, restaurant has a TV going with the match on. The roads were actually quite empty yesterday during the match as everyone was inside somewhere watching it.

It is quite fun to be standing in a store watching a bit of the match and getting in a conversation with someone on the series. They are always shocked to hear this American accent talking cricket.

The Windies performance yesterday was described by one commentator as muted. I'm hoping they are keeping all their great moves for when they need them.

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070320/lead/lead1.html

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sports/html/20070319T200000-0500_120632_OBS_WINDI ES_ADVANCE_.asp

GO WINDIES!!!

Looking forward to the match today, West Indies vs. Irelend, and wishing the Windies all the best in their battle to gain needed points going into the semi finals.

I have to attend meetings all day, but you can bet I will be checking in for the score every chance I get.

And to the posse of cricket die hards going in today from TB - yell for me!!

I am torn as to who to support! My love for Jamaica or d fact that i am irish - i am just so glad that we are both through to this round...

Yeah!!! Windies secured another win! Final score 190 for 2.

Super 8 here we come!

Thanks Van for the link to a great article found in the New York Times today discussing cricket in America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/opinion/23tharoor.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en =d39c8787

From today's New York Times:

Suspicions Turn to Cricket’s Dark Side


KINGSTON, Jamaica, March 23 — Cricket, especially that rambunctious form of the sport practiced in the Caribbean, has always been about far more than the ball, the wickets and the smartly dressed men standing out in the sun.

From the pulsating steel drums, to the gyrating fans, to the rum drinks swigged down like water, off-pitch antics always rival the game itself on the islands.

But when the Jamaican authorities confirmed that the coach of the disappointing Pakistani national team had been strangled, the Cricket World Cup, which is being played on nine different Caribbean islands this month and next, gained the world’s attention in a way the sport never quite has outside the cricket-crazed countries of the former British Empire.

On Friday, police officers were stationed throughout the Pegasus Hotel, where the body of the coach, Bob Woolmer, was found Sunday morning and where many players and team officials are staying. Police investigators were combing the hotel for clues, reviewing security videos and awaiting a toxicology report for possible poisoning. The authorities also said they were weighing numerous motives and suspects, including accusations of game fixing, enraged gamblers and disgruntled fans or team members.

By late Friday, a coroner’s inquest was ordered and the only certainty was that an event billed as a showcase for a newly confident Caribbean basin seemed to have been irreparably stained by an act of as-yet inexplicable violence.

The day before his death, Mr. Woolmer had appeared at an emotional news conference in which he sought to explain how his team, a perennial power that was a contender for this year’s cup, managed to lose two consecutive matches, one to a weak Irish squad.

With mighty Pakistan, which won the World Cup in 1992, the first of the 16 teams eliminated this time, Mr. Woolmer seemed as dazed as the rest of the cricket world. As the news conference broke up, Sandeep Dwivedi of The Indian Express grabbed him for a final question.

“I’ll sleep on it and tell you tomorrow,” Mr. Woolmer told him.

But by the next morning, the coach was dead.

Mr. Woolmer, 58, was found unconscious, clad in boxer shorts and sprawled awkwardly near the tiny bathroom of his hotel room at about 10:45 a.m. His extremities had turned blue, his face was battered, and there were signs of blood in the room, those who saw him said. The maid who found him summoned help, and Mr. Woolmer was taken to the University Hospital of the West Indies, where doctors declared him dead at 12:14 p.m.

At first, it was thought he had died of a heart attack, probably brought on by the stress of the loss. Then suicide was considered a possibility.

Finally, the deputy police commissioner, Mark Shields, a detective from Scotland Yard brought into the Jamaica Constabulary Force two years ago to quell the island’s crime wave, announced Thursday that he suspected that the coach had been murdered, and that he probably knew his attackers.

“Bob is a large man, and it would take some significant force to strangle him, but we don’t know at this point how many people were in his room,” Mr. Shields said Thursday. “There was very little evidence of a struggle.”

Police interviewed and fingerprinted all the Pakistani players and team officials and took DNA samples on Friday. At the same time, the police said Friday night that the team would be allowed to leave the country. Two team officials would stay behind, and two Pakistani diplomats are expected to arrive on Saturday.

Players were asked when they last saw Mr. Woolmer, whether he had been distraught and whether anybody had a grudge against him.

Given cricket’s unsavory history, devotees of the sport said, many people could fall into that category. Recently, Mr. Woolmer had invited Osman Samiuddin, the Pakistan editor of the Web site Cricinfo, to work with him on a book about his coaching experiences, Mr. Samiuddin said on the Web site. Mr. Woolmer had suggested that he might have something to say in the book about match fixing, Mr. Samiuddin added.

“I am not a name and shame guy, just the honest facts,” Mr. Woolmer had written to Mr. Samiuddin in an e-mail message that was posted on Cricinfo.

Although regarded as a genteel sport, cricket has a dark side. Gambling around the game has grown so substantially that huge sums are offered to players to throw matches. In one of the more notorious incidents, Hansie Cronje, the South African captain, was banned for life after fixing matches in exchange for large cash payments. The scandal prompted the International Cricket Council to set up an anticorruption unit in 2000 led by Sir Paul Condon, the former London Metropolitan police commissioner.

In 2001, Mr. Condon published a report detailing how some players pass inside information to bookmakers while others intentionally play poorly to fix outcomes.

Parvez Mir, the spokesman for the Pakistani team, said Mr. Woolmer was upset that proofs of a book had gone missing. “Bob told me the proofs had been misplaced and he was very disturbed,” Mr. Mir told reporters. It was unclear, though, whether the proofs were from the book Mr. Woolmer was proposing, or a less controversial book he had just completed on the art of coaching.

Anticorruption officials with the International Cricket Council, the sport’s governing body, had been sniffing around this World Cup before Mr. Woolmer’s death. They had, for instance, passed along dozens of names of illegal bookmakers to West Indian customs officials. They said they had also assigned security officers to all the teams.

The anticorruption squad also follows the money, monitoring how much is bet on particular matches. Big money bets on Ireland to defeat Pakistan, if there were any, would certainly generate suspicion.

The murder has already roiled the Pakistani cricket world. The team captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, has resigned, while the head of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Naseem Ashraf, and the three-member selection committee have submitted their resignations to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan.

The Pakistani team retreated Thursday to a resort in Montego Bay and prepared to leave. “The boys are very disturbed, very stressed, and they want to go,” said Pervez Mir, the team spokesman.

After the murder and their elimination from contention, the players had wanted to pull out of the tournament. But team officials decided they should play their final match on Wednesday, and they defeated Zimbabwe in a contest that was billed as a tribute to Mr. Woolmer.

Accorded celebrity status at home, the Pakistani team has been embroiled in one controversy after another. In July, Pakistan forfeited a test match against England, a first for cricket, after being accused by an umpire of tampering with the ball.

In the end, the captain was fined for bringing the game into “disrepute;” the team was found not guilty. Shoaib Akhtar, the world’s fastest bowler, and Mohammad Asif, a rising star, were also enmeshed in a doping controversy.

“What kind of people are they?” asked Khalid Satti, a fan who called into a Pakistani television talk show, lambasting the poor performance of the team. “Cricket is in our blood. We just can’t get over what has happened to us.”

Senator Enver Beg, who is on the Pakistani Senate’s Standing Committee on Sports and Culture, called for a “major surgery” in Pakistani cricket. “There is a need for change all over,” he said. “The chief executive, the team management and most of the players all should go.”

Amid all this the matches go on, and organizers of the tournament are hoping that the spectacular case will not tarnish the games.

“This is not the first time that tragedy has visited a sporting event,” said Malcolm Speed, executive director of the International Cricket Council, “but what we must all do now is to show how resolute the game is by proving ourselves strong enough to move on from what has happened.”

Mr. Woolmer, who was born to British parents in India, played cricket professionally for Kent and appeared in 19 five-day test matches for England from 1975 to 1981. But he was best regarded for his innovations as a coach for South Africa and Pakistan. He was one of the pioneers of computer and video analysis.

"...the only certainty was that an event billed as a showcase for a newly confident Caribbean basin seemed to have been irreparably stained by an act of as-yet inexplicable violence."

WRONG!

Whatever the outcome of the Woolmer murder probe, the beauty of the action on the field will not have been stained and will not be forgotten!

The crowds at Sabina Park were still large and enthusiastic and the action as tense, intense, and exhilarating as before the death.

And that's not to detract from the fact that a dastardly act has been committed.

I say, let the investigators get on with their job and may justice prevail in this matter, while the cricketers get on with what they had prepared so long and hard for - a fantastic Cricket World Cup.

It would be good to see the New York Times and some other major US newspapers actully sending some good journalists to the West Indies to learn and report on the game and the geat atmosphere that surrounds it. That would be so much better than writing from a distance, resorting to the use of worn cliches and stereotypes.

That's just too easy!

Big, big match today for the West Indies. It is the first match of the Super 8 quarter finals and the West Indies are playing Australia who some say are the favorites to win the series. The match is being playing in Trinidad. I am confident that the Trinidad fans will give the Windies the same great support the Jamaica fans gave.

Biting my nails already!!

Well, rain delay. The match will resume tomorrow with the West Indies batting. The score is currently 323 for 6 at the end of Australia's innings.

Nail biting continues . . .

Make the venue Antigua, Rebecca.

And, I'm still pretty confident we can make it!

Note, I didn't say we will... Just that we can! They have beaten Australia several times in recent encounters. Self belief will be an important factor this time round.

The night's break might do our guys some good, although this means that we will then have to play New Zealand in their second Super Eight game the following day - Thursday. Tall order that.

That is exactly what Silvan said, Earl. So if I've got two cricket connoisseurs telling me this, then I have high hopes for the Windies today.

The only thing with the night break is we don't know how much moisture the wicket might have early out, but we will still win this and go on to beat everyone else.

Guess i was wrong about winning this one but i still think we will win the world cup.

I like your attitude Rootsie! So sorry the Windies got a beating today - but there is always New Zealand tomorrow . . .

All the best to the team!

Poor windies they are being slaughtered by South Africa.Windies need 357 to win,very,very tall order.

UGH! Don't bother talk . . .

Here are the Gleaner headlines. http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070411/sports/sports1.html

Congratulations Windies on the win - - I guess.

Big news this morning!

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070420/lead/lead1.html

I hope we can pull off a win in this test against England today.Am backing my team all the way,go Windies.

Game draw,we salt just when we look good rain start.Next test starts friday.

Fingers crossed for Friday!