Cricket World Cup Sex Doll Shame
As a fan lucky enough to travel to the Cricket World Cup in the Carribbean, I can report that it has been an experience full of fun, and a credit to the islands hosting it. Or rather; everything outside the tournament itself has been.
To describe the competition itself, I'd like to highlight an episode of officialdom gone mad, involving a self important Security Guard and a sex doll, Misguidedly, the security official tried to confiscate the aforementioned doll from a bunch of rowdy New Zealand fans during their match with the West Indies. As he picked it up and carried it away- with no mention as to what crime the unsuspecting doll had committed to warrant her ejection- he realised that, carrying under his arm a fully-inflated polythene woman, he probably didn't look quite as clever as he usually felt when telling people to keep their feet off the seats and other such nonsense. He in fact looked like a fully-fledged kidnapper, as the wind was making the unfortunate doll's legs flap frantically in the breeze as though she was struggling to break free.
He then, safely back in his Security chair at the front of the stand, had to negotiate how to deflate the pneumatic woman. His search for the air valve was priceless; as was his face when he realised where the love-doll manufacturers, with the sense of humour you'd expect of them, had placed the valve.
This poor, unfortunate doll was an important symbol for this World Cup. Her unexplained ejection was symptomatic of the overbearing, American-run Security in force at the grounds- an attitude which stretched to the almost complete eradication of any Carribbean flavour from the matches themselves. Cricket in the Carribbean is usually a festival of music, dancing, barbecues, and overall, fun. The organisers of this World Cup thought it was enough to provide this with staged, tacky displays of "culture" in the lunch breaks. Of course what we all really wanted to see was an event which retained the real flavour of watching cricket in the West Indies; unfortunately that couldn't happen because of the American security, and the fact that the tickets were priced so highly that the local people we'd all hoped to share these events with were simply unable to afford entry to more than a match or two.
The Kiwi fans' doll's plight was more than just symptomatic; the doll was the embodiment of this World Cup- picked up, gripped too tightly, kicking and thrashing. In this case, the overly officious man doing the kidnapping was Malcolm Speed, the chief of the International Cricket Council. This tournament could have been an explosion of culture, colour, music, and sport all rolled into one. As it is, the grounds have been largely half-full at best, and the tournament has effectively been superimposed onto the Carribbean without allowing the islands themselves to interact with the tournament properly. The tournament had the air squeezed out of it by planning committees.
Occasionally, the matches were good enough to allow us to forget the stranglehold of the ICC. England's match against Sri Lanka was by far and away the best game of the tournament so far, the last-ball defeat coming as a bitter blow to all of us English fans shouting ourselves hoarse and waving the flag of St George manically. Unfortunately even the flag-waving was a bit of a flop; flags were allowed in the ground, but only when security personnel had removed the stick ( to be crude, "removing the stick" would have been a good idea for the security men themselves).
Amid all of this, the tragedy of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer's murder a week or so beforehand was brushed under the carpet- it barely made the local press, our only information on the murder investigation's laboured progress came from the copies of the British papers we managed to get hold of. There was talk of this tournament needing to be stopped after Woolmer's murder- the response was that it should go ahead, as a man who devoted himself to the game, he wouldn't want the tournament to stop. The final stages of this tournament will have some considerable work to do in order to make it a tournament befitting Woolmer's memory. Let's hope it happens.
To describe the competition itself, I'd like to highlight an episode of officialdom gone mad, involving a self important Security Guard and a sex doll, Misguidedly, the security official tried to confiscate the aforementioned doll from a bunch of rowdy New Zealand fans during their match with the West Indies. As he picked it up and carried it away- with no mention as to what crime the unsuspecting doll had committed to warrant her ejection- he realised that, carrying under his arm a fully-inflated polythene woman, he probably didn't look quite as clever as he usually felt when telling people to keep their feet off the seats and other such nonsense. He in fact looked like a fully-fledged kidnapper, as the wind was making the unfortunate doll's legs flap frantically in the breeze as though she was struggling to break free.
He then, safely back in his Security chair at the front of the stand, had to negotiate how to deflate the pneumatic woman. His search for the air valve was priceless; as was his face when he realised where the love-doll manufacturers, with the sense of humour you'd expect of them, had placed the valve.
This poor, unfortunate doll was an important symbol for this World Cup. Her unexplained ejection was symptomatic of the overbearing, American-run Security in force at the grounds- an attitude which stretched to the almost complete eradication of any Carribbean flavour from the matches themselves. Cricket in the Carribbean is usually a festival of music, dancing, barbecues, and overall, fun. The organisers of this World Cup thought it was enough to provide this with staged, tacky displays of "culture" in the lunch breaks. Of course what we all really wanted to see was an event which retained the real flavour of watching cricket in the West Indies; unfortunately that couldn't happen because of the American security, and the fact that the tickets were priced so highly that the local people we'd all hoped to share these events with were simply unable to afford entry to more than a match or two.
The Kiwi fans' doll's plight was more than just symptomatic; the doll was the embodiment of this World Cup- picked up, gripped too tightly, kicking and thrashing. In this case, the overly officious man doing the kidnapping was Malcolm Speed, the chief of the International Cricket Council. This tournament could have been an explosion of culture, colour, music, and sport all rolled into one. As it is, the grounds have been largely half-full at best, and the tournament has effectively been superimposed onto the Carribbean without allowing the islands themselves to interact with the tournament properly. The tournament had the air squeezed out of it by planning committees.
Occasionally, the matches were good enough to allow us to forget the stranglehold of the ICC. England's match against Sri Lanka was by far and away the best game of the tournament so far, the last-ball defeat coming as a bitter blow to all of us English fans shouting ourselves hoarse and waving the flag of St George manically. Unfortunately even the flag-waving was a bit of a flop; flags were allowed in the ground, but only when security personnel had removed the stick ( to be crude, "removing the stick" would have been a good idea for the security men themselves).
Amid all of this, the tragedy of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer's murder a week or so beforehand was brushed under the carpet- it barely made the local press, our only information on the murder investigation's laboured progress came from the copies of the British papers we managed to get hold of. There was talk of this tournament needing to be stopped after Woolmer's murder- the response was that it should go ahead, as a man who devoted himself to the game, he wouldn't want the tournament to stop. The final stages of this tournament will have some considerable work to do in order to make it a tournament befitting Woolmer's memory. Let's hope it happens.
Labels: Sport
posted by Matt at 4:34 pm
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