The 47th Harry Brittain Fellowship
6 June to 14 July
Cricket Attachment
By Curtis Rampersad (Trinidad)
TI suspected this would be good afternoon when the head server at Edgbaston apologised to the four sports reporters and myself because sandwiches and tea were five minutes late. It wasn't typically what one would expect of treatment in the press box of a county cricket ground. But Twenty20 cricket at Edgbaston is hardly typical.
It was the second day of my attachment in beautiful, tough, edgy Birmingham and I'd accepted an invitation from the Evening Mail's sport writer Brian Holford to go see a match between the Warwickshire Bears and the Steelbacks from Northamptonshire.
It seemed a good way to cap off an afternoon of hard journalism and churning out four editions of the evening paper. Besides, Warwickshire is the side dazzling left hander and fellow Trinidadian Brian Lara scored his record 501 runs for back in 1994.
On July 6, another Trinidadian, albeit not one as good with the bat as Lara, entered the sacred ground at Edgbaston.
Understand something. Twenty20 cricket, as its name suggests, isn't the average county cricket match. Nine thousand screaming fans under a red afternoon sun in good British weather and you get a vague idea of a match that lasts 20 overs a side.
Twenty20 is fast and frantic, with fours and sixes in every over. You blink, you miss something important-like a wicket for instance.
Curtis in Alex Ferguson's seat at Manchester United |
This is not cricket at Lord's. Although there are enough dark pinstripe suits and club blazers hovering in the VIP boxes, the prawn and mayo sandwich crowd did not invade Edgbaston. At least not during Twenty20.
This is a cosmopolitan group of regular people who love cricket and Warwickshire. This is also the kind of game where Queen, U2 and Madonna scream out of a ten-foot wall of speakers and Bear mascots dance around. Yes, this is more like what cricket at the Queen's Park Savannah in Trinidad is like. Except there's more calypso during overs.
Humour me and see the astounding similarities between Edgbaston cricket and the Harry Brittain Fellowship.
They're both fast-paced. They both completely engulf you for a brief period of time. Bonds are forged amongst people from different places who all share something in common: either their love of cricket or their passion for journalism.
And after days of dark rain and bone-cutting winds in the middle of an English summer, (like the weather during several days of Fellowship visits and training), it was a nice change to kick back under a patchy blue sky and have a couple of pints. Just like a couple of afternoons during the Fellowship.
