A Pirates Life for Me

[superkingdave]

There was a time when hardly any players from CW were seen abroad, now they are uniquitous. Not that the actions of a select few are likely to give us a good reputation.

I have it on good authority that there was a ticker tape parade planned alonf with other festivities for our arrival, me and Chris were supposed to be judging the local beauty contest and Dave was scheduled to open a new bar downtown. That's all gone to pot now, no pun intented.

By all accounts i was lucky, Chris and Ian said when they arrived it took them 5 hours to get through customs and they had to bribe the receptionist at the hotel to give them they're rooms, seems the locals have taken umbrage at the Aussies after the Watt Debacle.

There was no reception commitee at the airport, i had to get my own taxi, and that only after i managed to convince the guy that i was equally taken aback by the treacherous Aussie's Actions. He responded by saying "Well you better score some runs then" I decided it wasn't the best idea to tell him i was a spinner, hear they aren't that popular round here, so i told him id scored 5 centuries this season and he seemed content with that.

Met up with Ian and Chris at the hotel and we decided the best thing to do was get bladdered in advance of the first game. Broadie tried his luck with a local girl but got knocked back, but we managed to polish of a fair amount of liquor and went to bed looking forward to our first match against Port Of Spain.

 

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

Well that explains Broadbent's performance...

 

[Slats4ever]

yeah mate I get the same impression these Prince Town people just don't want us here. They got screwed over once by Dave and now hate us. I went to a bakery and there was this fat Jamaican lady behind the counter. I asked for a pie and she said 15 dollars. I had no idea because that was way too much. And she shook her wooden spoon at me saying, "we don't like you man, you betrayed our cricketer you cricketweb scum". I bit my lip and ignored her and said the pie was $1.80. She swung at me with her wooden spoon. Fortunately I dodged her swing and ran al the way to the nearest phone booth where I called Chris who had managed to hire a randem bicycle for the two of us at hire car rates.

Ahh it's going to be a tough start.

 

[steds]

this fat Jamaican lady

but you're in Trinidad

 

[Slats4ever]

Steds also tried to point out to me that I'm not actually in Jamaica, but this lady is an immigrant from Jamaica to Prince Town

 

[ash chaulk]

do they have pies in trinidad??? What about Maccas Hows the Maccas over there?

 

[Slats4ever]

maccas is trash my friend, it's too nutritious for my liking.. I found some dodgy joint that sold pies mate, they're around everywhere that I go. A little cart often follows me around when on tour!!!

unfortunately the maccas story wasn't much better. stay tuned and i'll post about the maccas story or maybe superkingdave will tell u

 

[superkingdave]

Well we woke up the next day with very sore heads and Ian was muttering something about Maccas and im damned if i know what hes on about. We went down to the ground to meet out team mates before the big season opener against Port of Spain Porters.

I was interested to note that there were two Englishmen in the squad, but upon meeting them i quickly decided that they weren't worth talking to. With their dubious dress sense and uncontrolable body odour you can see why they put fear into our opponents hearts though.

The stars of the team, well besides me, Ian and Chris, are our captain Sherwin Ganga, who doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humour, and Tino Best the somewhat crazy fast bowler. Now i had seen Tino on TV before and taken an instant dislike to him, but on meeting him, we got along famously. I found out that Tino likes a drink and he also knows the best places to meet the ladies around here. He's also promised to bowl one of his 95mph beamers at Steds when we play them.

We've got some awesome fast bowlers here though, Carlton Winslow who can also bat some, the Henry's and Trevor Modeste. Not much in the spin department, thats why i'm here, but the captain bowls a bit and there's this young lad called Ian Singh, who's only 14, but is better than alot of CW players ive seen.

Our wicketkeeper is the brother of West Indies legend Dave Mohammed so that puts him up in my estimation, Theres some other players aswell but to be honest they aren't up to much.

After meeting the lads we went to the dressing room to get changed for our first matchup.

 

[superkingdave]

And so to the first game, right from the start i could tell there was something fishy going on. I saw Sherwin Ganga coming out the bookies shaking hands with Gareth King and Zafar Mohammed and for the team talk Sherwin just said 'Take it easy, boys, there's a whole season ahead of us'

Ganga won the toss and, even though us CW players all agreed it looked a good pitch to bowl first on, he decided to bat.

Ian went out to open with Gangs and their 66 run partnership was really the only highlight of the innings. Me a Chris got ducks though mine was a bump ball so i got my first taste of umpiring injustice round these parts. No one got a half century and we were all out for 198. Strangely Ganga seemed quite pleased.

It was then the turn of Chris to show us the way, which he did, if the way involves being carted all round the park. That the CW Black star bowled only 8 overs in the 125 bowled suggests more about Ganga's captaincy skills than Chris though.

Lallman was even more harshly treated, he bowled 8-4-10-1 and crazily the likes of Manson and Markus were given more overs. Markus in particular was interesting, included in his 13 overs were 4 no balls, called for throwing. The T&T authorities may have to investigate his action.


Port of Spain or Pile of S*** as we imaginatevly called them, scored 441 and we were under pressure.

Ian made up for his bowling exploits with an exhillerating century and yours truly gave one of the finest exhibitions of defensive batting you'll see this side of Norway, even though all the crowd had gone home i knew that they would have given me a standing ovation had they remained.

We got a draw, Gangs got his payout and us CW boys hit the town with Tino afterwards in search of some healing, Marvin Gaye style.

The team awards for the match were as follows:

Muppet of the match:
Ashley Pittman, top order strokeplayer my ****

Best Haircut:
Chris Broadbent, the fact that he did so little in the match meant his hair stayed pristin all the way through

Champagne Moment - My ball to Lezema that was remeniscent of Ashley Giles to Chris Cairns in the test this year.

 

[AUST_HiTMaN]

Good reading mate. It gives me confidence that my decision to leave that hell hole was the correct one.

Thanks.

 

[Slats4ever]

Yeah i second what dave said about Tino, the bloke is an absolutely top guy. at the moment he's one of my best mates over here, he took the three of us around in his hotted up car and was pumping at the reggae, broadie got upset and put his ACDC in his headphones. we stopped off at some joint and picked up some joints and we smoked them as we watched the sunset. I'm tempted to bring Tino back to Cricketweb land as a souvenir.

Man sherwin ganga and i are not getting on well though. It all started when the two of us were sitting at a poker machine together and he said my teeth were dirty. I just laughed it off and said i only clean them about twice a week. Then he told me in a very serious tone black peoples teeth are whiter than white peoples on a whole. And believe me i fired up. I told him that they weren't really they just looked whiter cos their skin was black.

He told me I'd never bowl for the club again....

I stormed out in anger and asked the other Aussie boys to follow me, they didn't and here I am in my hotel room

 

[ash chaulk]

Bro you aint making many friends in this place

 

[Slats4ever]

what about tino? it's just that they don't like me for some reason

 

[superkingdave]

Man, another awesome night last night, Tino took us to this club on the beach that was open till 6 in the morning, but we didn't stay that long, cos we found some mighty fine ladies to enjoy the company of. I dont know how we all made it to the ground in the morning but we did and we were looking forward to a good match against Toco.

There was one change to the line up, the captain sensiby heedin our callls for the axing of Ashley Pittman replaced by Imran Khan. It wasn't Pittman's week, as the girl that Chris was with last night turned out to be his girlfriend, relations within the squad are tense to say the least.

The early spoils went to us as Toco's openers, Simon in particular took a pounding, where he got all these pies to bowl at us no one knows. Ganga was the pick of the top order with 57, the two englishmen were solid but their poor running between the wickets and general slothness would go on to cost us at the end of the match. Ian made just 12.

There were some important contriubutions down the order from Richards(4) and Broadbent(5) as we posted 317 all out.

THe flashes were in trouble almost immediately as Broadbent tempted Fitzsimmons to fish outside his off stump and a regulation slip catch was taken. Winslow bowled Kanhai, Tino trapped Jan lbw, and then one of the balls of the century was produced to remove Lendl Simmons. We were frustated by Dobson and Garven until the former was undone by the pies of Markus, seemingly hitting him to the boundary at will, he danced down the wicket and was brilliantly stumped. Broadie removed Pope for a duck but Garven and Jaffar frustated us but our mate Tino then came on to clean the tail up. 264 all out.

Ian was out for a duck and the calls to promote me and Chris up the order for quick runs fell on deaf ears. Imran scored a labourious 65 as we strolled to 158-5 delcared, leaving them 212 to win.

We had them introuble at 66-4 after Simon had been taken out by probably the best catch ever seen, ever at backward point by yours truly. Chris came up with some crucial wickets in the middle order but Garven again frustrated us, but not as much as the poor umpiring, he must have been out at least 9 times in the match only for the umpire to give him not out each time. No wonder they embraced after the match.

It all boiled down to the final over, with no chance of the victory, Toco had to bat it out. That they succeeded was once again at the result of some extremely dubious umpiring decisions, not the first time i might add. three times the shouts went up with the batsman plumb, three times the umpire counted the notes in his pocket and said not out.

And so another dissapointing draw, but at least tonight we can get us some draw of a different kind and relax a little, Gangs said he wants us down for training tommorow but we told him where to go.

 

[superkingdave]

Our admiration for Tino rises daily here, only today he helped to get us out of another scrape. We'd hired a mustang to have a little drive round the island and though, with Ian at the wheel, we were only going a lazy 130mph we got pulled over by some cop on a power trip. Well, our friend Tino says, "Give us a benjamin, Tino'll sort this out" and goes of to talk to the cop. Whilst i didn't hear what was said, i'm pretty sure this is an accurate transcript.

Cop: Do you realise how dangerous your driving was?
Tino: Do you know who these people are? These are international cricket stars, you cant just go around stoppin them as you like, think about it man, youll cause an international incident!
Cop: Hey man, i didnt know, you mean thats, Richards, Markus and Broadbent in there?
Tino: Too right, and now what do you reckon they think of T & T hospitatility?
Cop: Look, im real sorry dude, any chance you can get some autographs for me?
Tino: Hey man, dont push youre luck, these people have bowling fingers to protect, are you gonna be responsible for theyre injuries? i dont think so
Cop: Yeah, didnt think man, tell you what ill put out a call to all units to make sure you dont get anymore hassle in your car. Please dont tell my boss
Tino: Okay ill let this one slide, dont let it happen again.

And so we were on our way, never found out what happened to the dollars though...

Anyway on to our next matchup, first one dayer of the season and at home to the Pos Porters. We were in charge of the game from the start, we got off to a flyer through Gangs and Hundley, though Ian was dissapointed again. We had a but of a collapse and we had to rely on yours truly and some of the other lower order players to get us to a good score. 189-9

They were always behind the rate, Chris found his line and length to bowl his 6 overs for just 22 and Ian Singh bowled well on debut. I nicked in with a tidy spell, which included a tremendous amount of playing and missing and lbw appeals turned down, even a dropped catch, but i was happy with the win for the team, and i'm always happy to get a fellow CW player out. Gangs got the MOM but no one congratulated him

 

[Slats4ever]

hehe nice traffic cop incident... and too right Gangs didn't get congratulated, he can just sit by himself in a corner. me sense a big adventure is about to occur between gangs and tino... Don't know what's going on with my cricket, but at least i'm having fun out here

 

[superkingdave]

Last night, in the interests of team bonding, we all went for a meal at a nice curry house in Princes Town.

The whole squad and the managment all went out, as well as two women. Now this was supposed to be a team bonding session so it was strange that 2 women would tag along, but the prescence of one of them can be easily explained as our star of the future Ian Singh had to bring his Ma along as none of us would be sober to take him home after.

The other female present was one Mrs Ganga, the reason for the funny moods that our esteemed captain always seems to be in. Now ive seen people under the thumb before, but this was more like under the truck, never have i come accross a more overpowering and frightening lady in my life. Turns out cricket is the only time Gangs gets away from her, kind of explains a lot of his behavior, guess ive got a different opinion of him now. Tino tried to make a joke, big mistake, Tino's ears met handbag.

Several Phal's, hours and trips to the toilet later, we took to the field for our second one day match against Toco Flashes. It was a good job they aren't up to much, cos i was definately feeling the burn. Chris only had a korma so he was raring to go and dismissed Garven and Fitzimmons, who also looked a bit worse for wear, early and it was pretty much downhill from there for Toco. Simmons and Bibb top scored with 31 but they only managed a paltry 146. I managed a couple of wickets late on and Ian Singh bowled superbly well also.

The reply was routine, Gangs got some of his relationship angst out early on and then Ian smashed away some of the cobwebs and the Toco bowlers with a brutal 75 from 66 balls to take the MOM award. Simon bowled 3 overs for 24, including this shot.

20.4 Fitzs'mons to Markus, FOUR, Ian Markus is one of the best batsmen
in the world


Another fantastic win for the Pirates

 

[Langeveldt]

this fat Jamaican lady..

Pray tell, which one? (Youve got a couple of hundred millon to chose from)

 

[Slats4ever]

hehee that's right Fitzsimmon u better believe it Ian Markus is one of the best batsman in the world.

Funny you should mention that story about Gangs missus, I actually had a nice little chat to her during the night and she seemed friendly... We're meeting up for coffee together tomorrow afternoon... Depending on how it goes I'll let u know what happens...

I'd like to all tell you a bit about the other night that dave forgot to mention. After our curry feast we all made our way over to a dingy karaoke bar. Inside were a lot of hot women, and I mean a lot. A few of the boys, Tino, Ian, Me and Dave made an agreement that if any of us could get a phone number by nights end, the group had to all put in one stick of weed each. We all failed but Dave's effort was the best. He strolled up to the microphone and pointed at the ugliest looking lady in the room and said "this one's for you" He began singing the most stirring rendition of "you've lost that loving feel".... The lady then got up from her seat and walked over towards Dave, we all thought we'd lost our bet. The rest of the bar started laughing and we didn't quite know why. To our amusement Tino found out off one of the locals, that this Trinidadian woman, was actually a man. What followed is probably a little bit too raunchy for these pages, but let's just say this lady hadn't lost her loving feeling.

 

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

Well at least Dave has something to remember T&T by...