Buried treasure: the real home of Antiguan cricket

The dear old Antigua Recreation Ground was empty yesterday. Beneath the high ramshackle stands named after the country's legends, a football pitch was laid out with a makeshift dugout on the side.

Near the centre circle it was just possible to make out what was a batting crease, a place where Sir Vivian Richards, albeit briefly because he did not need much time, flayed the England attack and where Brian Lara resided for slightly longer, two days longer, to make the world record Test score, and where the West Indians chased down a monumental target to win.

These events are imperishable in the minds of those who witnessed them and, indeed, in the minds of those who did not see them but claim to have been there, which is most of the 70,000 or so population of Antigua. Not long ago spectators would start queueing at 5am and the ground would be full to bursting and anticipation by 9am. All the joy of Caribbean life was there.

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But the ARG, cheek by jowl with busy downtown St John's and part of the fabric of the city, the nation and the region, is not what it used to be. Great cricket deeds, indeed almost no cricket deeds, will be performed there again.

It has been usurped. It has not been usurped by football, for football has always been played there: football in the winter and cricket in the summer. For it was the ARG, the ground for all the people. In a way it has usurped itself.

Cricket, big cricket, has gone elsewhere on the island. It has gone to the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium a few miles inland, the official Antiguan ground built with money given by the Chinese government. The International Cricket Council, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the ARG was unfit for purpose for the 2007 World Cup, which shows what it knows.

But it has gone, too, to the Coolidge, up by the airport, where the Stanford Cricket Ground now stands. This is wonderfully modern. It has air conditioning where the ARG has a blast of local heat, its lawns are manicured and its buildings carefully designed by architects, but they do not speak of love, devotion and community like the ARG.

"Everybody who lives here wants cricket to be played at the ARG, it was part of us, part of our history," said Bickham Moitt, a taxi driver. "Those people waiting in line in the early hours had booked their tickets months and months before. They were exhibiting a pride in their nation."

There is the feeling, however artificially generated it might be, that the days of Viv and the boys will be back later this week. On the ground built by the Texan multibillionaire Sir Allen Stanford, the Stanford Super Series is taking place. On Saturday night, with a purse of $20m (£12.8m) on offer, $13m of which will go to the winning squad, this will culminate in a match between England and the Stanford Super Stars XI.

"The country is looking forward to this and by the end of the week the excitement will be growing," said Pat McDonald. "By Thursday night you will be able to feel it in the air and because it is all tied up with our independence celebrations it will be greater still."

McDonald, the manager of Pepi's restaurant on the edge of St John's where the chicken dishes are legendary, came to Antigua from her native Guyana 20 years ago. She was indoctrinated in the ways of cricket at an early age but the Stanford Twenty20 tournament, which began three years ago and has led to this "Twenty20 for Twenty", has entranced her.

So, too, Ian Tittle, on security at the downtown Heritage Hotel and proudly sporting one of the ubiquitous "Twennytwenny for twenny" polo shirts. "I'd love to be there, I'd love to see the Stanford Superstars win," he said. Shades of the days of Viv and the boys there.

It is indeed all over the place and Sir Allen's publicity machine is both efficient and slick. It has been unquestionably helped by Independence Day coinciding with the big match. On 1 November 1981, Antigua officially seceded from the United Kingdom. The measure of how far it has come is that it is only when Independence Day comes round that it thinks now of the mother country. The whole thing appears to be working to proper time and not what is affectionately, sometimes irritably, known as Caribbean time. But it may lose something for that.

Stanford, who has brought millions of bucks and plenty of employment to this small country, appears to divide opinion. Rich men do that. Moitt, for instance, finds all the development around the airport, all Stanford's work, grating. Apart from the cricket ground there is the Sticky Wicket Restaurant (owner: Sir A Stanford), the second of two branches of the Antigua National Bank (owner: Sir A Stanford) and the headquarters of the Antigua Sun (owner: Sir A Stanford). "I just would have preferred he hadn't done that," Moitt said. "But he has his supporters, of course he does."

One of them might be Moitt's fellow taxi driver, Barry Oliver. He enthuses about what the Stanford millions have done for employment on the island and how the Twenty20 tournaments have engaged the islanders. "If you give a man a donkey, he rides it," Oliver said.

Few seem to object to the size of the purse, though $20m translates into $52.6 Eastern Caribbean Dollars, the local currency, which is even more mind-boggling. Anybody who was feeling queasy about this might have been tipped over the edge during the England v Middlesex fixture on Sunday night. Sir Allen, whose beneficence appears boundless, could be seen on the boundary sitting with some of the England players' wives and girlfriends, cuddling them and putting his arm around their shoulders. How they laughed. It was the England captain, Kevin Pietersen, who once said of T20: "Silly shots for a silly game."

This seemed to show that this cannot be taken seriously, except for the money. Oh and the girls cavorting with Sir Allen, whose RSM's moustache was as erect as a toothbrush. The England fast bowler Stuart Broad, reflecting on England's 12-run victory yesterday, said: "It was an interesting point when it came on the big screen and there were a few gob-smacked faces. I didn't see it because I was bowling the over but I think Matt Prior had a bit of a shocked look on his face [when Stanford sat Prior's wife, Emily, on his knee], especially as she's pregnant as well."

Doubtless it was all good fun. Maybe Sir Allen sees himself as heir to the tradition of Gravy and Chicky, who used to strut their stuff so memorably down at the ARG, the very essence of the Caribbean. They are not to be seen at the Coolidge ground and the manicured lawns would not suit them.

Life has moved on and it has moved on to Twenty20. Down at the Antigua Recreation Ground there were ghosts. In the pavilion were the honours boards and an honours pennant with the three big ones etched on it: fastest hundred, Viv Richards 110 not out from 58 balls; biggest successful fourth-innings score, 418 for 7 by West Indies against Australia in 2003; and of course biggest Test score, 400 not out by Brian Lara against England in 2006. Whatever twenny-twenny cricket is played at the Stanford ground, and for however long, those are records it can never hold.

Oops! Lights threaten the $20m dollar catch

The trouble with building cricket grounds next to airports is lights. If you install them; they have to be low to avoid interfering with incoming flights; and the lower they are, the more they interfere with catches.

In the first two matches of the Stanford Super Series, 14 have been dropped, seven between the Stanford Super Stars and Trinidad & Tobago, seven more between England and Middlesex. The players have blamed the lights – even Andrew Strauss, who shelled what might be called a dolly if that did not invest it with a degree of difficulty it did not possess.

Yes and no. Obviously, balls coming down in the line of the lights will be difficult to judge and it seems that having to move to catches makes a difference, though that is the case with all catches.

Thus, it is all set up for Saturday and a last-ball catch on which $1m a man depends. "Sorry, lads, lost it in the lights, you know what it's like," might not do the trick immediately.