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 at my heartstrings ever since I became a cricket fan; England is cricket's place of birth and India is now its financial capital, but for me West Indies remains the game's spiritual home. Despite the misery of the national team, it conjures up of images of cricket played for the right reasons: for enjoyment. I had never been here before, and it's a moment I had waited for all my life.

Yet I very nearly didn't come. Numbed by death, turned 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. And 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 Heathrow immigration asked me was if I was going find out who killed Bob Woolmer.

But touching down on Barbados meant connecting with cricket once again. The airport is a sprawling and single-storey building 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 the St Lawrence Gap, a busy, bustling street lined with bars and restaurants which turns in to one big party after sundown.

Spread over 166 square miles, about the same as Mumbai but with a population of 264,000 as opposed to Mumbai's 18 million, 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 like long-lost friends, 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 and remarkable specimen that can glide through the air up to 100 yards at 30 km per hour, 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. Irish fans are everywhere, but so are Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Indians.

It's almost evening by the time I get to the ground. The accreditation centre has just closed. So I can't get in to ground. But I hang around to soak in the atmosphere. Ireland have just beaten Bangladesh. Burgers and hot dogs are selling briskly and a local band is playing on a podium nearby. A young couple join in for an impromptu dance and are cheered lustily.

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. They are still wearing the Indian team shirt. It's like wearing their hurt. They are from London. 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." They are not alone.

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 yet. That's the way it should be.