“Sporting sadness and successes all in one week!”

Oct 13, 2013 Sports

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Colin E. H. Croft

Last week included much sadness, with the death of an influential female motor racing exponent, coupled with one of Trinidad & Tobago’s budding soccer stars losing a leg, with hopes that that would save his life after surviving a heart attack. In such clouds came some silver; West Indies Women were triumphant!
Older sports patrons would remember legendary William “Bill” Shankly, who died in 1981, considered one of the best soccer Managers ever, who played soccer for Scotland before Managing one of English Premier League’s most illustrious clubs – Liverpool Football Club – from 1959 to 1974.
Promotion from 2nd Division (now Division 1) to 1st Division (now Premiership) by 1962, followed by LFC winning three 1st Division championships, two Football Association (FA) cups, four Charity Shields and one EUFA Cup, were all achieved in his fifteen years of Managing/coaching.  The man was a genius.
His attitude to sport, especially football, and to life, also shone through too: “Some people think that football is a matter of life and death.  I assure you that it is much more serious than that!”
How apropos for T&T’s Akeem Adams!
I have always been a big motor racing fan, and, having attended races at Brands Hatch and Silverstone, in United Kingdom, I know that, if ever possible, I will attend Monaco and Japanese Formula 1 races too.
I still remember incomparable Murray Walker’s commentary on BBC Television’s late night replays of F-1 races between 1977 and 1982, when I played county cricket for Lancashire CCC.
After a hard day’s toil on soft English pitches, absolute noises of F-1 distracted from my aching body!
So, it was with great surprise and unbelief that I read that Maria De Villota, who had paved the way in Formula 1 for women, in a totally male-dominated sport, had been found dead in a hotel in Spain.
Like another female ceiling breaker, Danica Patrick in USA’s Indy Car and NASCAR races, De Villota had brought men of the sport to recognize that excellent female talent and expertise existed with her too!
Already, De Villota had lost an eye in a bad accident last year in England, while speed testing for the Marussia team, but she was still such a popular and effervescent member of the F-1 fraternity, and so determined to come back to the sport despite that set-back, that her death has put an immovable cloud over this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix 2013.
What a loss to the sport!
Trinidad & Tobago’s 22 year old Akeem Adams’ plight obviously brings us directly back to Shankly and his suggestion of sports, and its effect on life, and death. Football has been Adam’s entire young life, with so much potential to get to the stratosphere in his chosen game. Now, he is fighting for his very life!
The player’s situation also tells us that we should never take anything at all for granted. Try to enjoy all. No-one knows when the end will come, so, while honestly critiquing and objectivity should be acceptable, hating and openly discrediting make no sense whatsoever; such a thin line, that!
Here is a guy, in the prime of life, plying his sporting trade to make a living to feed his family and to improve his skills, with hopes of continuing future play for his country, when he is struck down with a massive heart attack, no less, one of the most unlikely candidates for such an occurrence, considering his fitness levels.
Shock is the mildest word than one can conjure here, but this is real life, or death, as only his biological family could appreciate. No-one but God knows how his mother and other relatives could feel!
But, from this desperate gloom comes that proverbial ‘Phoenix’, West Indies Women – some may even say much better than the men – keeping up the banner of West Indies cricket on the international stage.
The WI Ladies had to dig very deep, and steel themselves too, overcoming doubt and depression, after collapsing from 179-4 to be all out at 224, losing the 1st ODI to New Zealand Ladies by a solitary run.
So, WI Ladies won ODI No. 2 by an astonishing 89 runs, despite making only 148 in 50 overs, due to the varied all-round attack of left-arm medium pacer Shanel Daly; 3-14; incomparable Stephanie Taylor, whose off-breaks garnered 3-10, and 17 year-old leg-break phenomenon, Shaquana Quintyne, 2-9.
ODI No. 3 was a real final and WI Ladies did not disappoint. It was always going to be World’s No.1 player, Taylor, who was to make the mark. Her majestic 135 no., her fifth century, in 67 ODI’s, set West Indies Women on their merry way to a useful 238 in their 50 overs.
Taylor, the bowler, also featured too, getting 4-35 and having useful allies in Daley, 2-28; Quintyne and Anisa Mohammed getting one wicket each, as New Zealand Women succumbed dismally, for 143.
That come-from-behind series win helped West Indies Women, and our world of sports, generally, to have much needed luster after a terribly gloomy sporting week.  Thanks, ladies.  Enjoy!

 

 

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