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The seventh major OCCC tour saw us return to the Caribbean, the destination for the inaugural trip 15 years earlier, and we travelled with the largest party to date, 36 players, wives, girlfriends and children plus a nanny. The results may have been disappointing - we managed to win only one of our six matches - but few would dispute St Lucia did not rank among the best tours undertaken by the club. The resort at Cotton Bay Village was idyllic, the locals unfailingly friendly (even when thumping us on the pitch), and the mix of the party almost perfect. But without the Herculean organisational efforts of Tom Merry and Jonny Gates the trip would not have been half as enjoyable as it was.
We assembled at two terminals at Gatwick early on New Year's Day for the BA v Virgin race to St Lucia (won by Virgin despite revisionist banter from Rick Johnson) where we encountered a comical delay on arrival as three large jets landed at the same time, bewildering the handful of immigration staff. We eventually arrived at Cotton Bay after sunset and enjoyed a quiet(ish) evening at the beach-side bar. There weren't many other low-key evenings to follow.
The cricket started with two trips to the south of the island to play at the Beauchamp Cricket Ground, a lovely venue but one which was only reached by road. While there may be relatively few cars on the island, the willingness to gamble on overtaking on blind corners was universal, and even when the road was clear it had a nasty tendency to disappear as a result of mudslides. Even the hardest men in the squad were left quaking, or in the case of Alan Cope, hiding under the seats, as our drivers accelerated into blind corners. However, that could not account for our abject batting performances. We lost the first game by 80 runs after being set a modest target of 125, and a day later slid to a 133-run defeat after being bowled out for 87.
The tour dinner on the Thursday at the stunning Cliff at Cap was memorable for the setting and the sumptuous meal. It also heralded the arrival of Eds Copleston who had used the finest legal minds in the USA to circumvent visa issues by convincing the authorities he was attending a funeral in St Lucia … Will Howard's funeral. Copleston was brutally fined, and was barely seen in daylight hours until his return to America three days later.
On Friday we played a Twenty20 double-header at the 12,000-seater Beausejour Cricket Ground, the main venue on the island which had hosted a semi-final during the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup. The first game brought us our one and only win. Henry Watkinson led by example, captaining with astuteness and then cracking 52 as we eased home by five wickets with four balls in hand. After a well-received coaching session with local children, we played the second match under floodlights, another first for the club. We appeared on course for another victory before eventually falling short by four runs.
Saturday was a day out on a catamaran with a muddy stop-off at the volcanic sulphur baths, and then a more gentle match against a SLNCA Veterans XI on the Sunday which went down to the wire as we lost by one wicket. The final game, our fourth at the Beausejour Cricket Ground, again ended in defeat, this time by 34 runs. In fairness, other than the first two matches, our other three defeats were close and could easily have been won. However, given we took the strongest tour party of any of our seven trips, we had hoped for better.
The main problem was our batting, with our key batsmen never really firing at the same time. Tom Crump was the leading run-scorer, making one of only two fifties we managed, while Watkinson, who scored the other, batted well in our win. Will Howard was at his best when opening the innings and twice appeared to have put us on course for victory only to be let down by the middle order. David Bugge looked as reliable as ever, especially in his last outing, but Cope, not short on determination and timing the ball well, failed to make the big score which seemed likely. We did not help ourselves with some calamitous and quite unnecessary running.
The bowling was spearheaded by Paddy Harman and Matt Crump. Harman, who took 11 wickets, kept a good line and length, while Crump, who finished with 10, appeared more dangerous but was prone to too many wides. Tom Crump took some unlikely wickets, sometimes buying them as batsmen sought to hit him further and further, while Jonny Gates, after 3 for 19 in the opening game, tended to underbowl himself. Michael Chetwode was the most economical bowler but surprisingly took only the one wicket, and had to look on as Watkinson assumed his role as rabbit-hunter.
The fielding was generally very good, with Harman exceptional and the Merry brothers not far behind. We held some phenomenal catches and also put down some far easier ones, but that served to enliven the nightly fines sessions which varied in their brutalness. The most memorable one came when Chetwode set out to sink a number of his team-mates but rather lost track of what he was doing and only succeeded in rendering himself speechless as rum punch followed rum punch. The BBQ at the Johnson Villa (sprawling estate might be a better description) was perhaps the most enjoyable as the barman from the resort was hired for the evening along with a local steel band. Most of those attending ended up in the swimming pool before the night was out.
The evenings were lively without descending into the excesses of South Africa. A succession of restaurants witnessed OC napkins on heads, and one set of bemused waiters looked on as a senior table opted to eat without cutlery, the call of our club president of all people. Several nightclubs also 'enjoyed' our patronage, even if the quality of the chat-up lines remained atrocious, and trips to Raaadney Bay were almost daily. Caesar's Palace, the local karaoke bar was particularly accommodating - allowing a succession of drunk OCs to grace the stage and Will Howard to take the lead role as compere. The locals were surely baffled by our preference for 'Don't blame it on the Bugge [sic]' and Coldplay's Paradise - a close run thing for official tour song... The nightclub of preference was, naturally, 'Delirius' where a continued stream of blazered OCs tackled the local swamp and attempted to outdo each other with increasingly large rounds of rum and coke...
We were fortunate to eat at some of the Eastern Caribbean's finest restaurants - the CoalPot, the Edge, Big Chef's Steakhouse to name a few. The highlight was the tour drinks and dinner reception which took place at the stunning Cap Maison resort on the West Coast. We begun with sundowners on an island (accessible only by the beach much to the amusement of those not wearing high heels) and the OC-blazer-wearing bar staff ensured that significantly more gin was drunk than tonic. The dinner in the cliff-top restaurant was top-notch and some impromptu dancing and the announcement of the starting XI by the band ensured that we left our mark.
The all day cruise proved to be eventful and ultimately extremely enjoyable. On arrival the catamaran wasn't quite as described in the pictures - more of a double-hulled ferry (with no working engines). The girls, expecting a sun net on the front, were instead confronted with a 50 ft banner proclaiming 'Whale Watching, Weddings, Party!'. Fortunately the ferry's failing engines and a lengthy discussion between the tour organisers and the captain ensured we were transferred to a 'proper' catamaran although the crew had to be called up on their day off to sail on our behalf! The trip was truly special with an opportunity to visit the famous Pitons in the south, a trip up the active volcano and snorkelling and swimming on the West Coast in the afternoon. The crew took it all in good spirits and even opened up the reserve draft lager when we had consumed the initial supplies (just before lunch!).
Howard crashed and burned on the first night, others followed in succession, with Harman discovering too late that arriving for an all-day cruise the worse for wear is not advisable. However, the presence of our own posse of WAGS added much-needed glamour to proceedings, and some of them showed an alarming ability to outdrink the boys.
Thanks are due to Merry and Gates for retaining admirable good humour throughout. Mini Mez's intricate organisation would have shamed a Club 18-30 rep and he repeatedly pulled out all the stops to ensure everyone was having a good time. Despite losing all four games he captained, Gatesy took all that was thrown at him - not least the absentee captain's savage fines - and emerged smiling. He almost cracked when senior batsmen refused to bat where asked … almost. Rick Johnson also unselfishly visited every restaurant on the island - some of them twice - in the weeks before the tour to identify the best places for us to eat. And finally, the tour would not have been possible but for Nova Alexander, the executive director of the Sacred Sports Foundation in St Lucia, who organised our cricketing affairs on the island superbly and with great energy.
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| The lights on during the OCCC night match at the Beausejour Cricket Ground
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