World Cup diary

If you were comparing the merits of paradise and St Lucia, the debate might need extra time and to be decided by a bowl out. (A bowl out, incidentally, is the decreed method of deciding the world champions if the final ends in a tie).

The cricket stadium is also the best in the Caribbean, modern and purpose built. Yet cricket has never quite taken root on this island as it has in other countries hereabouts. It seems remarkable that St Lucia has spawned more Nobel prize winners than it has Test cricketers - two to none.

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Sir Arthur Lewis (economics) and Derek Walcott (literature) won in 1979 and 1992. In contrast Darren Sammy is the only cricketer from the island to have represented West Indies, winning two one-day caps in the 2003 Champions Trophy.

Labour's love lost

The Beausejour Stadium beneath the hills of Gros Islet in St Lucia was opened in 2002, having been built under the Labour government of Dr Kenny Anthony. It brought the island to international attention in a way that only its Nobel laureates had done previously.

Last May it became the first ground in the Caribbean to host a floodlit cricket match. St Lucians are extremely and correctly proud of the Beausejour.

Their thanks to Dr Anthony was to vote out his government last December in result which surprised everybody and returned to government the man who led them to independence in 1979, the 82-year-old Sir John Compton.

Les's new life

An England footballer with strong St Lucian connections was in the country last week. Les Ferdinand was born in London but his dad hails from the island. Les, who has been retired these past 18 months and is still looking as sleek as a panther, now does some work for the excellent St Lucia Tourist Board and also hopes that his son might one day play football for the country in the Olympic Games.

ICC on a sticky wicket

The International Cricket Council, whose tournament this is, are of course desperately keen to protect the rights of the event's commercial partners. Hence the stringent bag checks at every venue. It is an expressed intention of some mischievous spectators to smuggle in some Coca-Cola to annoy tournament sponsors Pepsi.

It would be a bit rum of the ICC to complain overmuch if this wheeze succeeds. One of their partners is the electrical goods manufacturer LG. But at both the opening ceremony near Montego Bay and the matches in Kingston in Jamaica they are trying to cover up with sticky tape - and not totally succeeding - the manufacturer's name (Hyundai, who are not sponsors) on the televisions which are dotted around the media area. The ICC may have to ban themselves.

Sonn's word games

There was a series of dignified speeches at the opening ceremony. But the Diary can reveal what was not said. The ICC president Percy Sonn changed whole tranches of his speech from the printed version, eliminating a quotation from Julius Caesar. The West Indies Cricket Board president, Ken Gordon, referred to West Indies' first cricket tour, which was to Canada of all places in 1886. But he excised from the original text the following potentially contentious statement: "Thank you, Canada. If the choice was ours we would have rewarded you by selecting Canada as our opponent for the final."