`Passing the Test with Flying Colours’
By Colin E. Croft
Former West Indies fast bowler
Guyana Chronicle
March 29, 2007
LET us get one thing perfectly clear. Without any bias whatsoever, the new Guyana National Stadium at Providence, despite all of the hooplas, positive and negative, about almost everything imaginable that can be suggested for a new sports stadium, has passed its first test with flying colours.
No-one expected that everything would be in absolutely perfect working order, and not everything was, but from a standpoint of being functional, the new Guyana National Stadium (GNS) at Providence is a winner; 8.5 out of 10!
Even the Sri Lankans, who just lost to South Africa in the very first international game there, and, I am sure, the South Africans themselves, would have to agree with that suggestion, even though the Lankans seemed very uncharacteristically flat, as a team, in their first game in the Super 8 series. Their loss had nothing to do with the new arena.
I had visited all of the new and improved cricket arenas that have been earmarked for the CWC 2007 over the last several months.
At one stage, the new GNS was ahead of the schedules set by the International Cricket Council and the Cricket World Cup 2007 personnel. Then, for some strange reason, the Guyana end of the CWC 2007 project was found to have been behind the schedule and was, supposedly, near to being scrapped as a venue, from the schedule altogether. Whether that was true, or not, does not matter.
The GNS, in its entirety, when all of the outside amenities will have been completed, would be a truly wonderful edifice for cricket in Guyana. It did very well on its first day!
What I do find strange with all of the accusations, suggestions and everything else is that no one seems to remember that anything new causes problems. It is how one deals with the new and ongoing problems to these projects that will inform about flexibility.
London’s new Wembley Stadium was only played on last weekend, fully two years after it was supposed to have been used, after its renovation, and also fully 20 million British Pounds (US$40 million) over budget. Do I hear any noises on this? Of course not!
The 2012 London Olympics are already over budget, by several billion pounds Sterling. The initial budget to stage the 2010 Olympics, when Lord Sebastian Coe and his team won the bid from France, was supposed to have been about eight billion pounds (US$16 billion).
At the very last count, on the London Olympics 2012 website, the new budget is already being suggested to be at least 12 billion pounds Sterling (US$24 Billion).
Plans are one thing. Effecting those plans correctly, efficiently and in, or under, budget, are all entirely different situations. The Guyana National Stadium has done just fine!
One last example of plans and efforts going wrong would be the new Airbus A-380 Super Jumbo aircraft. It is so much behind time, and so much over budget, that at least two very well known major airline entities have already cancelled their orders for the massive airplane. I think that the Airbus A-380 will be exactly like the Boeing B-747, which also had problems in the initial stages. Now, after all, the B-747 is the world’s most used and most successful aircraft. In time too, the Airbus A-380 will do well.
The pitch at the Guyana National Stadium was shorn of grass, which is unlike that of the new Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad & Tobago.
At least, the pitch stood up well to nearly 100 overs of the first game, despite some persistent rains before the first game, and all of the other things that go into making a good pitch.
Andy Atkinson, who is the ICC Pitch Consultant on the GNS pitch project, an old friend of mine from his days at Essex County Cricket Club when I played County Cricket for Lancashire County Cricket Club, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, should be very proud indeed of his and his team’s efforts.
Similarly, the people who managed to get the outfield in such immaculate, “fast” condition and to have it become much larger than most other outfields in the Caribbean, should also be happy at the first outing of the Guyana National Stadium at Providence.
As to the game itself, one must agree that while it was a very thrilling spectacle overall, especially for Lasith Malinga with his round-arm trundlers to nearly get Sri Lanka to the tape. Sri Lanka simply lost the game because they batted quite poorly to amass only 209 on a nearly perfect batting pitch.
Why Sri Lanka would choose to bat first on a pitch that no one knew much about, when their own strength in the preliminary rounds was bowling first, is anyone’s guess. They simply outguessed themselves and fell just short.
In record-breaking Lasith Malinga, he is the first man ever, in any kind of international cricket, to get four wickets in four successive deliveries; and Dilhara Fernando, who did not play against South Africa, but who could be the cause that India are not in the Super 8, via his 92 mph missile to catapult India’s Sachin Tendulkar’s leg stump last week, Sri Lanka has a fast bowling combination that, in time, will terrorise many a batsman.
If they stay fit, learn more about fast bowling, and with the still excellent all-rounders Chaminda Vaas and Ferveez Maharoof, and the wonder of the off-spin of Muttiah Muralitheran, Sri Lanka would have a great bowling attack in the very near future.
South Africa, having brought no points into the Super 8 games from the preliminary rounds, needed to win this game to keep the team in the tournament and they played like men possessed. Their fielding to restrict the normally aggressive and pugnacious Sri Lankans to just over 4.0 runs per over, when Sri Lanka batted first, was unbelievable.
The Proteas’ bowling too was quite good, especially from the supposedly “back-up” bowlers, Charl Langeveldt and Andrew Hall.
Between them, they allowed only 63 runs from 16 overs, while Langeveldt had the first five-wicket haul of the tournament - 5-39 from his ten overs. The display by these two suggested that South Africa are slowly becoming an all-round team, even if they still need a proper front-line spinner. At least, Jacques Kallis continues to make useful runs, despite coming under a great cloud last week against the Australians, when he was accused of batting much too slowly.
Also, by winning this game, South Africa can now start to remove that suggestion that they were ‘chokers’, the suggestion made after they had literally grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory in the semi-final of the 1999 CWC, against their nemesis, Australia, at the Edgbaston Cricket Ground, in Birmingham.
The one downer of the first official day at the new Guyana National Stadium was that there were only about 5 000 persons at a stadium that is supposed to hold nearly three times that amount.
Also, if one is into engineering, as I am, some of the design flaws showed up immediately, as many of the patrons were being involuntarily sun-burnt once the sun had reached its afternoon position, as the over-hangs of some of the stands were simply not adequately designed and/or built.
As I said earlier, not everything was perfect, but I am sure that everyone who was there to say; “I was at the Guyana National Stadium on the day that the first international and CWC 2007 cricket game was played there, between South Africa and Sri Lanka”, would have enjoyed themselves! I certainly did!