I find our cricket in the Caribbean to be a lot like our food. At times exciting, often spicy, sometimes just meh…, but always necessary.

Even when we have no desire to eat the cricket fare put in front of us, we partake of it. Because for us, cricket is part and parcel of our daily lives. It sustains us, fuels our hopes and fears, and keeps us dreaming about a new ‘Fire in Babylon’.

Even after we swear never to touch the stuff again, like the addict we try the bootleg audio or video channels over and over again, attempting to satisfy our craving for performances of yesteryear like a Gayle storm, Sammy super smashes or Chanders defiant defenses.

Perhaps we are not even aware of how much the game of cricket and the stars of our Windies cricket impact the casual island fan. We are usually so enmeshed within our insular island mentality that we often fail to recognize and appreciate that the fans showed up to see a match in Antigua, St Vincent or Trinidad, precisely because they wanted to catch a glimpse of their super-hero, Chris Gayle, whose home island, incidentally, is Jamaica.

On a Friday night, indulging in roasted tuna strips with scallion and pepper sous-kai, with a beer or two to wash the palate, our young “experts” debate the merits of having three major game formats, and whether different captains for each format of the game is a must.

Of course they remain blithely unaware and frankly unimpressed with the ‘good old days’ when test cricket was the only game in town, when radio commentary was king, and a turn of phrase by our Reds Perreira or Tony Cozier painted a vivid and enduring landscape for a Viv Richards ondrive, a Michael Holdings bouncer, or a Gordon Greenidge square cut.

Even the staunchest, if most ignored fans of our cricket, the housewives, talk back and forth about our cricket fortunes in the foreign lands of England, Australia and India over the river wash or a plate of coucou and flying fish, ackee and saltfish, rice and peas, or some green fig and mackerel.

It is always a tradition to have one for the road in our island culture, especially when we know that the weekday fare will be the same old boiled yam and salt pork. So in every rumshop in our archipelago, as we take our last ‘shot of white’ for the road, we ask about our boys, ‘how did they do today, …unh?’, hoping that they did better than yesterday, just as we secretly hope that there will be a little more spice to our every day fare.