St Vincent's Findlay triumphs against the odds

BASSETERRE, St Kitts, Mar 12 (Reuters) Overcoming isolation and size, tiny villages scattered throughout the Caribbean have spawned magnificent cricketers ranking alongside any of their contemporaries from more privileged backgrounds.

One typical outpost is Troumaca in St Vincent, birthplace of Michael Findlay who kept wicket 10 times for the West Indies in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The tale of the second person only from St Vincent to represent the West Indies is a triumph of will and a slice of social history from a time when cricket was the undisputed unifying passion in the English-speaking islands.

At the age of 63 Findlay, the chief executive officer of the St Vincent World Cup local organising committee, is lean, fit and still an active player.

He speaks of the past with nostalgia but without sentimentality and the less glorious present with clarity and insight.

''Where I came from we played all the time, using everything that was around us,'' Findlay said in an interview with Reuters. ''There was a lime tree and an orange tree. The lime tree would never flourish. We used the lime to bowl.

''We used grapefruit, we couldn't afford balls. When we did get a real cricket ball, we covered it in soft, white grease. We would then wrap the ball in banana leaves to preserve it.

''We used coconut branches as bats. We would use a cutlass to shape it into a bat. We just used what we could.'' Like small boys everywhere, Findlay wanted to be a fast bowler.

Instead he followed the example of his father and became a wicketkeeper.

Unlike the four big cricket centres of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana, which hosted international teams, St Vincent in the late 1950s and early 1960s was on the periphery and the young Findlay had to develop his skills by himself.

He read books by the England and Australia wicketkeepers Godfrey Evans and Wally Grout. The school, where his uncle was the games master, posted Marylebone Cricket Club coaching charts on the wall.

Above all he practised fanatically.

''It was the kind of commitment that borders on insanity,'' he said. ''I was a fitness fanatic because that was what I wanted to do. We have a kind of commitment and a kind of discipline that is difficult now.

''Cricket was a passion, all the people in our village, even the ones who didn't play, would encourage us. I practised a lot, I watched a lot. At the age of 11 I was playing for my village, when I was 16 I got in the St Vincent side.'' Findlay wanted to be more than the best wicketkeeper in the West Indies. His ambition was to be the best in the world.

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