It has become a morning ritual to search Google for all the latest cricket news of the day. August 27, however, was different. The first news item that got me transfixed read, "Sir Clyde Walcott dies aged 80." Immediately my mind went back to May 2005, when I had the fortune of meeting and then dining with Sir Clyde at his Barbados home. Finding the house was initially an ordeal. Chandradev, my producer at Ten Sports, was hurrying up for we had been allotted a sixty minute slot for an interview. Puneet, one of the world’s best slow motion cameraman and who incidentally was driving our hired Nissan, was doing his best to negotiate the Barbados alleyways. Finally, it was in a bizarre fashion that we found the house. Having looked for it for near an hour, Puneet just raced into a villa on top of a mound and got off with a huffsaying, "Let us go in and ask". In we go, and find out that we have indeed reached the house of Sir Clyde Leopold Walcott.
It is routine for us all to conjure up visual imageries. The image of Clyde Walcott that I had conjured in my mind was that of a lean6' 2", standing tall and dismissing the ball past midwicket with utter disdain. Unfortunately, I was still in the 1950s and time had moved forward by more than half a century. The Clyde Walcott who appeared before us was a frail legend who had very little interest left in life. "I am very sick and can’t walk properly", he said walking on crutches. And what had affected him even more was his son’s fall to polio. That hecould still somewhat paint was a glimmer of hope. The first thing we were shown was a portrait of Sir Clyde batting, drawn by his son.
When we went about our interview, we could barely hear him speak. Let me introduce a caveat here. For most of my questions hegave me routine answers in a rather soft voice-"Yes, West Indies has a chance in World Cup 2007. After all we will have home advantage. I feel sad that talented youngsters are not talking to cricket in the Caribbean in the way we used to in our days. With football and basketball making an inroad, there are a lot more options these days for kids." Even when I prodded him about the legendary3Ws, he remains subdued. "The three Ws thing was just an accident. It so happened that we were born within a mile of each other and all our surnames began with a W. Had our surnames been a Smith, King and Walcott there would be no legend."