Jamaica beat
London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down
Paul Winslow
25-Feb-2013
London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down... It seems like a fairly strange song to celebrate victory with, but the Jamaicans gave it a fair few renditions as they celebrated victory against an England team that managed to plumb new depths. For those who have been watching England for years that takes a special kind of effort as there have been some real depths.
We met the Jamaican grins with ironic grins of our own and shared handshakes with them as we left the ground. Their particular handshake consists of a handshake and then a flicking of the thumbs against each other and we've all got the hang of it now. We struggle to understand exactly what they are saying sometimes as the patois leaves us baffled, but there has been a genuine bonding between us and the locals.
Throughout a sporting performance that was so bad it was almost funny there was one particular moment of hilarity. As England were about eight wickets down with over 40 overs to play the stadium announcer made a big song and dance of telling everyone that the ticket office was selling tickets for the next day's play. Everyone in the stadium laughed at that one as the chances of it ever getting that far was slim to none.
With back-to-back Tests now the norm, you never get much time to explore the great places you visit to watch Test cricket. So when a Test finishes a day early the bonus is that you get some free time, but sadly Jamaica is closed on a Sunday so there's little to do but dissect another terrible England performance. And try desperately to get excited about the next one. That's not as difficult as it could be because Antigua is not exactly the worst next port-of-call.