CRICKET CALYPSO (RAMADHIN AND VALENTINE)
You'd need to be of a certain age to remember Lord Beginner's original; or, indeed, Ramadhin and Valentine.
Cricket, lovely cricket
Old Trafford was where I saw it
Cricket, lovely cricket
So lovely you can’t ignore it.
Bowled out for just 129
England won by 269
369 was what we scored
A rattling knock from Stuart Broad.
Once upon a better time
You’d have Ramadhin and Valentine.
Cricket, lovely cricket
Nothing better can lick it
Cricket, lovely cricket
My drug of choice I cannot kick it
West Indies they were once the best
Australia next, and then the rest
Michael Holding and Wes Hall
Terrified us with the ball
Brian Lara, Viv Richards too
Showed us what their bats could do
In better times they had great spin
In Valentine and Ramadhin.
Cricket, lovely cricket
Over football I’d pick it
Cricket, lovely cricket
And as for Wimbledon – stick it!
The greatest empires never last
The times have changed, those days are past
Today you bowed to England’s Woakes
And to the bludgeoning bat of Stokes
So whether it’s Trent Bridge or Lords
These days it’s Anderson and Broad.
John Coopey
Wed 29th Jul 2020 20:25
R&V pre-date me by a bit, MC. My earliest recollections were of Frank Worrell’s tourists of 1963, with Seymour Nurse, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, Lance Gibbs and the Terrible Two of Wes Hall and Charlie Griffiths. (All from memory! But when I looked it up on Google I found I’d missed off a bit-part pie chucker called Gary Sobers),
You’re so right, Stephen. Those WI quickies of the 70’s and 80’s were brutal. Add in Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge and you probably had the most complete team there’s ever been. Better times for them then.