Leaving quaint and quirky Basseterre

On Sunday, Basseterre was a veritable ghost town. The streets were deserted and the shops were barred. The banners and beat-boxes of Independence Square had been packed away, leaving behind only the detritus of the cultural fair that has been running for the past ten days. Even the taxi stand by the town clocktower had been stripped of its jostling drivers. The entire island appeared to have gone back to sleep.

This in itself was not in fact unusual; the same happens in these parts every Sunday, as trading ceases and everyone heads home to their families. But the suddenness of the silence was unnerving. On Saturday the carnival had finally reached full steam, with a decent (if not packed) crowd turning out to watch the marquee event, Australia v South Africa, and the same number and more tumbling down to the beach bars of Frigate Bay soon afterwards. Now, they had packed up and gone home. The legacy of St Kitts' World Cup experience starts now.

And yet, there were signs of life amid the silence. As I roamed the streets in search of a bakery, I passed two teenage boys in the old churchyard by Warner Park, playing cricket with a tennis ball, using a tombstone as the stump. It was, with the exception of a glimpsed knockabout in a field by a school, the very first time I had witnessed an impromptu game on this island. The boys, one named Andreas and the other too shy to respond, had apparently attended all three of the matches. Their actions weren't much to write home about, but they could certainly biff a ball a fair distance. It was encouraging. A start.

Later on in the evening, myself and two fellow journalists located a top-floor bar on the pedestrianised "Co-Operation Avenue", as Basseterre's main shopping street had been renamed for the week. From balcony to balcony, strings of flags - St Kitts and Nevis alternating with Taiwan - fluttered in the breeze while, at 22-yard intervals, large pot-plants had been placed all along the centre of the road, as if to reinforce the no-cars rule, and to encourage acts of spontaneity.

At dusk, five children, younger than the first pair, emerged from a back alley, and having flung a tennis ball with impressive power up and down the street for ten minutes, scampered off briefly and re-emerged with a bat the size and weight of a canoe paddle. One of the girls, older than the rest, proved particularly adept at belting the ball high into the beams of the Creole buildings lining the street, though fortunately they had a hyperactive gymnast in their party who scaled the gutters in an instant and retrieved the ball every time.

It's only a start. But it was an encouraging sign nonetheless in a town that hitherto seemed indifferent to the game of cricket, even if the idea of a World Cup in their midst had tickled the fancy of many. If this scene is replicated all across the nine territories that have played host to these games, then maybe, just maybe, the legacy of the tournament will be worth the sweat and tears that have gone into producing it.

And so now it is off to Antigua, a more traditional cricket territory, to embark on the Super Eights. I shall miss this island, and its many idiosyncrasies. I shall miss the local television channel, ZIZ, with its rabbit-in-the-headlights newscasters and wobbly camerawork; I shall miss the extraordinary sight of the Prime Minister, Dr Denzil Douglas, conducting an ad-hoc cabinet meeting in a beach bar with rum cocktails; I shall miss my tooth, a broken molar that was giving me such gyp that within half an hour of ringing up, I had had it extracted by an extremely professional local dentist. Rum and pliers in a back alley, this was not.

And I'll remember for a long time the little moments of this fortnight, such as the press corps cocktail evening at the International School of Nursing, where our preconceptions were blown away by the most state-of-the-art teaching facilities I've ever seen. A vast lecture theatre and laboratory, as well as a ward full of computerised mannequins, designed to groan, convulse and even flirt with the nurses as they practise their skills. Apparently only the US Army has more than the 19 we saw in one ward, and I bet they don't have one that gives birth either …

Then there was the encounter with a taxi driver by the name of Gordon Carey, who had been one of the first reality TV stars when he took part in the BBC's Castaway 2000 at the turn of the millennium. Bored of his 15 minutes, he had jacked in a high-flying career in Birmingham to pursue the quiet life. And what about the moment when my apartment in Bird Rock was invaded by two Cuban backpackers, who - with barely a word of English between them - ransacked every light bulb in the flat and replaced them with an energy-saving alternative? Apparently this was a nationwide scheme in response to rising electricity prices. It's not such a bad idea either.

At present St Kitts is a small and unaffected island, although that inevitably has to change. The loss of the sugar industry in 2005 means tourism is the only way for this economy to survive, and the sheer scale of the Marriott Hotel in Frigate Bay gives an impression of constructions to come. They won't all be pretty, and sadly much of that corner of the island may soon resemble the north coast of Jamaica, with its all-inclusive SuperClubs and plethora of fat Americans in Bermuda shorts. But for now it is an island that, for 15 hugely welcoming days, has showcased most of what is good about the Caribbean, and this World Cup. And in light of the events engulfing the tournament elsewhere, that can only be a good thing.