There is much focus on the intimidatory aspect of West Indies' pace attack © Getty Images

It's not everyday a grown man can say, “Today, I'm going to cry”. And yet, that prediction was one I could make with some confidence on Tuesday, April 26, as I headed into Manhattan to catch the North American premiere (at the Tribeca Film Festival) of Fire in Babylon, Stevan Riley's documentary tribute to the champion West Indies teams of the 1970s and 1980s. I wasn't wrong: I blinked, I swallowed hard; I felt a lump in my throat, and for many, many moments, was transported again to a time when the lithe body language of the West Indian cricketer was the final signature flourish on a display of cricketing skill unlikely to ever be seen again.

For cricket fans who came of age in the 1970s, those two words, “West Indies”, still convey something of the aura of that most incredible of cricketing outfits, whose combination of power, panache and physicality ensures they will remain the benchmark setters for a long time yet. The rampant Australians of the late 1990s and early 2000s set new statistical benchmarks and enthralled us with their skills as well. But, they didn't have the on-field charisma of West Indies.

Can any modern cricket image match that of the West Indian slip cordon settling down, their hands plucking at their trousers to raise them ever so slightly as the quick sprinted in? Can any modern team match the the swagger, the bravado, of Lloyd's crew? The baggygreen wearing Aussies come the closest, and yet, they will themselves acknowledge, they had some way to go.

West Indies' steady downward decline since 1995 is one of cricket's saddest stories; while West Indian cricket has seen cycles in the past, it is not clear when it will emerge crest-bound from the current trough. For those whose exposure to West Indian cricket is limited to the post-1995 era, this film is essential viewing in understanding just what the cricketing world has lost, how it is immeasurably poorer for the passing of that era.

For anyone new (or old ) to the game, this documentary will help explain why cricket is simply not a game, why, to see it as “just a business” or “just entertainment” is to do severe violence to fans' and players' relationship to it. And it should help us see why formats of the game that defang the bowler by taking away a bowler's full armoury, make the game a less searching examination of a batsman's skills, and ultimately, provide a poorer spectacle. You'll understand, why, to use Mukul Kesavan's line, “spit-drying fear” can be good for the game.

The film is everything its trailer promises it is: a focus on Clive Lloyd's champion West Indies, taking as its starting point, its resurgence following its 5-1 shellacking by Greg Chappell's Australians in 1975-76, and moving on to the 1976 tour of England, the 1979-80 tour of Australia, and the 1984 blackwash series. The movie has an especially strong focus on the intimidatory aspect of the team's fast bowling resources, here understood as an expression of resurgent black power, resisting colonial and white subjugation, whether political, linguistic, or sporting.

There is plenty of dramatic cricket footage, especially of batsmen getting a severe working over. Indeed, if there is a weak point in the movie, it is that it seems to focus a little too much on the intimidation and not enough on all the other cricketing skills the West Indians possessed. There are other complaints. The footage sometimes does not match the narration; Gavaskar's walk-off in Melbourne 1981 is shown as backdrop for India's complaints about the 1976 Kingston Test; Lloyd is shown holding the World Cup as West Indies' win in Australia in 1979-80 is featured; still photographs show Michael Holding, Wayne Daniel and Andy Roberts left-handed; there are no interviews with opposing batsmen; there is little mention of the role of Frank Worrell. And so on. Purely as a documentary, the movie often suffers.

But one should be grateful someone has bothered to make a documentary about the mighty West Indies, and if, given the inevitable limitations of time and money, the filmmakers wanted to convey cricketing skill has a political context, then they have managed to do so. The essential reading for West Indian cricket still remains CLR James' Beyond a Boundary, but this documentary will get you started.

And don't let anyone, ever, ever, tell you cricket is just a game, just bat on ball.

Steven Finn: Improving all the time © AFP

I had hoped for more from my first live match of the season, but I didn't even get three days because I couldn't be bothered to trek up to the ground to watch Middlesex knock off 54 runs to win on the third morning. The ball swung, it must be said, but even so Middlesex's batting on the first day was mediocre and on day two Essex really stank the place out.

From such a match there are few highlights to remember. Oddly enough, both the events that caught my eye involved Steven Finn.

The second of these was on the second afternoon, when Alastair Cook had seemed to be making a rather better fist of things than in the morning but popped up a half-chance to which Finn tumbled and completed the caught-and-bowled. It was a surprisingly gymnastic effort from the gangling bowler.

What had been even more surprising, though, was Finn's batting on the first afternoon.

Ravi Bopara had come on to bowl after tea, presumably to help spin things out for the new ball, and had obliged with the quick dismissal of Tim Murtagh, bringing Finn to the crease at number 10. He has previously demonstrated an ability to block and help a proper batsman through to a hundred or to graft out time for a draw but there was little evidence that he could score runs for himself. In 19 innings last season, nine of them not out and most of them for Middlesex, he averaged a princely 4.70 and had a career-best of 26.

In his bulletin for the day , ESPNcricinfo's Sahil Dutta mentioned the ninth-wicket stand as one in which Finn and Ollie Rayner “swung merrily”, which was not inaccurate but risked giving a slightly false impression of tail-end slogging. For at least the first half of his career-best 32, however, Finn did a very passable impression of a proper batsman. There was a sweet on drive which would have made Michael Vaughan happy if he'd played it and a cover drive as crisp and efficient as anything Jonathan Trott produces along with the solid defence which we already knew about. He has adopted the raised-backlift stance which England batting coach Graham Gooch used to employ and approached his batting very positively rather than with mindless aggression. The case which Bopara is trying to assemble in favour of his replacing the retired Paul Collingwood in the England set-up rests partly on his handy bowling, but it will have been set back considerably by his being hit out of the attack by a tail-ender, however improved.

Taken together, these two passages of play show that Finn has profited immensely from his winter tour despite losing his Test place. It would be pushing it to describe Finn as an incipient all-rounder on this scant evidence, but he has returned from Australia a much better cricketer than he was.

It is good to see that even with today's schedules which mean that touring teams play very few games outside the international fixtures, it is still possible for cricketers to continue their development.

James Anderson had little to shout about during his bowling towards the end of the match agsint Bangladesh © Getty Images

Amid all the lists of top players, teams, innings and what have you of the World Cup, I haven't noticed any booby prizes being handed out, and that is a serious omission. No World Cup can be complete without its share of goofs, howlers and blunders.

I can only make a few nominations because I didn't watch that many matches all the way through and there were several of which I saw none at all, so there will be many worthy contenders I have missed and I would be grateful for anyone else's accounts of incidents which made them laugh out loud or squirm in agony (if perpetrated by the team you support).

My favourite of all the gaffes I saw was the Missed Catch of the Cup. Not “dropped catch” because it was not even touched, relatively easy though it was. Netherlands' Ryan ten Doeschate had started to cut loose in their match against England when he skied one high and deep over the bowler's head. Kevin Pietersen and James Anderson were fielding at long-on and long-off, and both set off to try and catch it. Either of them could have made it, but they saw each other coming and both stopped and looked at each other as the ball fell harmlessly between them. It was straight out of a cartoon, and I whiled away the boring bits of some other games imagining how it would have looked in a Bugs Bunny or Pink Panther short.

Partly because of my limited selection of games, Anderson also wins my Worst Bowling award, although I'm sure there are plenty of other candidates. Bangladesh had looked to be cruising home until a tight few overs pushed the rate back up so that they needed 33 off the last 5 overs. Time for the batting Powerplay, and Anderson to bowl its first over. The first delivery was five wides down the leg side, and he went on to bowl another two legside wides which Prior managed to take. Only three were scored off the six legitimate deliveries, so it might have been precisely what was required, but those wides just handed the game to Bangladesh on a plate.

The Worst Batting can also be looked at as an example of superb bowling, but for me Lasith Malinga's demolition job at the end of Sri Lanka's match against Kenya was an exhibition of comedy batting. It is of course a bit unfair to mock the tail-end batsmen of an Associate having to try and deal with lethal yorkers from one of the best bowlers in the business, but I could not suppress the giggles. They looked like Stan Laurel trying but failing to avoid a soaking from a fire hydrant.

Limited-over cricket is bound to cause some mishaps in running as batsmen get desperate. In my view of this World Cup, idiotic running reached its zenith in India's quarter-final against Australia. Gautam Gambhir had just reached his half-century when madness took hold of him. He was absolutely desperate to get the strike back, for reasons unclear, and set off for impossible runs from the non-striker's end. Twice he survived, once when Ricky Ponting's throw uncharacteristically missed the stumps and a second time when the throw went wrongly to the keeper's end, but on his third attempt he finally succeeded in running himself out. Yuvraj Singh hadn't even moved as Gambhir raced three-quarters of the length of the pitch and then halfway back before David Hussey calmly removed the bails.

Umpiring is a fiendishly difficult job and it should be no surprise that umpires make the odd mistake. The DRS now corrects most of the obvious ones – and it shows that the umpires generally do a very good job indeed. Only one in five reviews resulted in a reversal, and few of those had been obviously wrong in real time. Except, that is, in the Pakistan v Canada match, where Daryl Harper managed to have three consecutive reversals during Canada's innings. It made me think that ICC need to make another adjustment to the Daryl Review System protocols: that no team will lose a review just because it turns out that for once Daryl Harper was right the first time.

Those, then, were my Golden Goofs for this World Cup. What were yours?