This men’s T20 World Cup has seen some fine performances but none more powerful than in Trinidad last week. To a packed house under lights, players and supporters misty eyed in a pin-drop atmosphere, David Rudder delivered a live rendition of Rally ’Round the West Indies, the calypso he wrote in the early 1990s that still serves as the region’s cricket anthem.
Rudder, 71, has scaled back this past year after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s but his spirit utterly prevailed on the night, West Indies and their supporters transfixed by the words and then living them out in a rousing comeback win against New Zealand.