Barbados breathes cricket

A flashing glimpse of aqua blue waters from the plane was enough to horrify me about my near folly. West Indies has tugged my heartstrings ever since I became a cricket fan, yet I very nearly didn't come. Numbed by death, put off by the lack of atmosphere and spirit and discouraged by the quality of cricket, I contemplated saving my West Indian tryst for a worthier occasion, but two postponements later, I boarded the flight still wondering if it was worth the effort.

A stop-over in London didn't help. The World Cup is almost a non-event there even though England could still make it to final. I had to wade through 19 pages of the sports section of a Sunday broadsheet ... football of all kinds, FA Cup, Barclays Premiership, Champions League, Coca-Cola Championship, rugby union, horse racing, motor racing ... before encountering the first mention of cricket. In tabloids, it was merely a footnote, and the only question the gentleman at the immigration asked me if I was going find out who killed Bob Woolmer.

But touching down on Barbados meant connecting with cricket once again. The airport is sprawling and single-storey with an air of informal distinctiveness about it. It has a canopy-like roof, and the sunlight streams through translucent fibre sheets. From the roof hangs huge vertical hoardings of Brian Lara promoting bmobile, the cellular service of Cable & Wireless, one of the sponsors of the World Cup, and in the arrival lounge two huge hoardings make you instantly aware of the cricketing heritage of Barbados. One features Worrell, Walcott, Weekes and Sobers, the other Greenidge, Haynes, Marshall and Garner. That Hall and Griffith don't find a space is a clear sign of being spoilt by the riches. Later in the evening, I would spot David Murray, rated by many the best wicketkeeper West Indies ever produced, but now a drinking wreck, on a bar stool at St Lawrence Gap.

Spread over 166 square miles, about the same as Mumbai, Barbados is among the smaller nations in the Caribbean, but easily the most prosperous. The British influence is evident in the architecture of the buildings around the city centre, but mostly it is lined with asbestos-roofed single-single storey houses spread along the coasts. Strangers smile at you and give you the thumbs up on the streets, cabbies chat away and street-side bars and pubs resonate with Reggae and Calypso.

You can feel cricket everywhere. There are roundabouts named after cricketers, there is a university ground named after the 3Ws. It's a picturesque ground where some warm-up matches were played. And the country is dressed up for the World Cup. With a bat in hand, the Flying Fish, the national symbol of Barbados, welcomes the visitor from every lamp post. Barbados loves cricket lovers, one message reads, A big Bajan welcome to all, reads another. Cricket is on the radio in cars, on television in restaurants, and visitors are everywhere, wearing their national colours, drinking, milling and making merry.

I bump into a group of Indian fans coming out of Kensington Oval. This was the match they had booked their journey for. It was meant to be India v Pakistan. Instead they have just watched Ireland beat Bangladesh. They are still wearing the Indian team shirt. It's like wearing their hurt. It has cost them a fortune to spend a month in the West Indies. "Tell the Indian cricket team this," one of them tells me, "we don't trust them any more. The next time, we will wait before we book our tickets."

But they trot off to the jetty to catch a boat to Grenada where Sri Lanka play Australia. They are not giving up on cricket. That's the way it should be.