All quiet at the historic ARG

Two tube lights lit up an empty stand at the far end. An empty beer bottle lies sunken on the corridor leading to the players' dressing room. The grass is growing wildly in patches in the middle and a bare manual scoreboard hangs at one corner. International cricket has moved to swanky new Viv Richards Stadium and the historic Antigua Recreation Ground, where Viv Richards made the fastest Test hundred and Brian Lara piled up his world records, is slowly dying.

Cartwright Ireland, the security supervisor, is slumped on a chair outside the corrugated gates. He sits alone in near darkness. For 11 years he has opened the gate in the morning and locked it in the night. For "Corty" this night is yet another night of guarding nothingness. Nostalgia has a charming way of warming you up on solitary nights. "I was standing here when Garry Sobers walked out to greet Lara after he made his 375." The place he points out is just outside the gate to the playing field but inside the complex. To its left is the famous Double Decker party stand, a two-tiered structure, where that famous cheerleader Laban 'Gravy' Benjamin would orchestrate revelries to the music of the DJ 'Chickie'. When Richards blazed away during that ton against England, Chickie played, "Captain, the Ship is Sinking". One's not sure what the England captain David Gower thought of it. Chickie has moved on to the new stadium but Gravy retired along with ARG.

The 'Rec', as the ARG was called, looks ramshackle, ignored and left to bleed to death by the administrators. If you have watched a game here you can understand why Richards described it thus: "It's small, intimate and there is something very special about the whole place. I don't think you will see anything like it again anywhere in the world."

Corty gives more evidence from the crowd's point of view. "You sit at the double decker stand and can yell out to your mate at the other end! You don't need phones. The crowd made sure the players too heard their voice." Corty himself played for the St John's club in those days and has even taken out Richards. For a duck. "I was a left-arm seamer and I remember that ball moved away from Vivy who edged it." That ball is now tucked away for posterity with a signature from Richards. He remembers the domestic games between the Islands, playing to a packed audience here. They now play some football and some local cricket in there.

In the previous decade, the members would come to the Rec in the evening and play dominoes. Even that has died down now. In fact, cricket is slowly disappearing off the streets and beaches of Antigua. It's sad. "It's more than sad," says Corty. Meanwhile the night falls at the Rec. It actually fell in 2006 when it was mothballed to give way to a new stadium and briefly came alive to flicker for one last time in 2009, when it hosted a Test against England, but it's all silent out there these days.