WORLD CUP DIARY: Grenada Cruisin’

I think I’ve mentioned before that the most interesting aspect of Grenada is the way the streets are built. For starters, the hills start almost from the edge of the sea. So what happens is that you have a lot of steep ups and downs practically all over the city/country. And if you think of Grenada as an average-sized Indian town/city you can imagine the lane-bylane system that it would have. Now replace these unexciting lanes and bylanes with roads that go up, up, up and then suddenly down, down, down. You go up for about 500 metres and then take a sharp right turn that goes down for about 300 metres and then take another turn towards the left and so on and so forth. What makes it even more exciting is the speed at which the cars move: about 40-50 mph, which is much, much faster than it would be otherwise.

But that’s not the reason why we are talking about cruising here. Actually we were taken on this nice cruise last evening by the Grenada Tourism Board. Over a hundred journalists from around the world got together at around 6.00pm last evening aboard the Rhum Runner II at the Queen’s Bay Jetty, for what promised to be a few hours of fun – obviously with a lot of drinking and eating and dancing and stuff…

And that’s precisely what it was. The boat/ferry/cruise ship took us quite some distance into the sea (the rather calm side of the Atlantic) and as darkness fell the breeze picked up. We, the Indian lot along with some of the Brits and Aussies, had taken control of one of the sides of the top deck, and it really was about the breeze and the lovely hillside dwellings and the rum for the most part. The music and dancing was mostly confined to the bottom deck, and we managed to miss all of it. Really didn’t realise how the time ran out and it was 9.30pm or so, and we were back on terra firma, all set to go back to bed.

As I write this, cricinfo says that the usual strange Indian teams have been picked for the tour of Bangladesh, Dav Whatmore has resigned, Lara will resign after the next game and much more… And Ponting and Hayden are butchering the New Zealand bowling right in front of my eyes here at the National Stadium in Grenada.