We have now arrived back in London with the weather wet and miserable.
The tour started on 22nd February we had 20 people in St Kitts and we became friends instantly, a couple of warm up games, a lot of local banter and several beers later we were on our way to Antigua. We had clients all over the island, so it was difficult to meet everybody though between Sara, Dom, Richard & I, we managed to spend some time with everyone. The catamaran trip was a huge success, with the legends of Antigua on board 2 of the boats – Curtly Ambrose and Richie Richardson – plus ex West Indies player Kenny Benjamin on the third. We had a lot of great comments on our day out and is something we will be doing again in the Caribbean in 2019. After 2 wins and Richie Richardson’s party with Spirited Band (in which he and Curtly play and sing ) and more famous cricketers – Joel Garner and Gordon Greenidge, we left for Barbados, some stayed on in Antigua and some arrived just for the Barbados match.
Our event at the Mount Gay rum distillery with Desmond Haynes and 3 other Barbados Legends hosted by Simon Hughes from TMS was a huge success with a hilarious Q/A session probing Ian Bradshaw, Milton Small and Thelston Payne for clues as to how the Windies will break this spell of underperformance and of course a quick look in to their cricketing past we all remember so well.
To be fair, the cricket probably was not the best, I personally think we are a very good team and the West Indies just not good enough, they have a lot of work to do in all areas, I did have a few minutes with Stuart Law and he said they were young but thought they have some talent to work with.
We have had several people ask us if we could arrange a reunion at a test match venue on a Saturday during July. If you are interested in this please contact me on cricket@ictours.co.uk, and we will do our best to make this happen, next year we will be offering weekends away in the capital at either the Oval or Lords taking in a day’s test and a show of your choice with hotel so please keep an eye on the ever expanding web site!
Finally I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting as many of you as I could, I think it was a huge success, many of you have expressed interest in future tours. Our repeat clients are always offered an advance booking period before general release, Sara & Richard will be delighted to hear from you, and put together a tour that suits your needs.
Thank you for reading my blogs, I will continue to write them when we have any news for you!
So for now a big thank you from me and International Cricket Tours.
Gary
