The crowd in Bridgetown mobs Lawrence Rowe after his triple-century © Getty Images

Celebration and remorse were both in the air. And closure. In an extraordinary statement, 28 years after he was shunned for going on a rebel tour of South Africa, Lawrence Rowe apologised for going on that trip in 1983. He dubbed Monday as the “final death of that tour”.

It started as a day of joy. Rowe, Michael Holding and Courtney Walsh were immortalised in the Sabina Park stadium during the lunch break of the first Test between West Indies and India. The two ends were named after Holding – his wife was there for the unveiling – and Walsh, while Rowe’s name was attached to the pavilion.

Rowe smiled and Walsh even allowed himself a laugh before Rowe read out his statement of apology. “About 28 years ago, a team of West Indies cricketers toured South Africa. At that time South Africa was banned for the apartheid regime. That tour and other such tours were grouped together as rebel tours. It was organised and conducted without the approval of West Indies’ cricket board. Such tours were in fact outlawed by cricket boards over the world, by governments including the government of Jamaica and by other international organisations like the United Nations. Understandably, that tour upset the people of Jamaica. Today I sincerely apologise to the cricketing fraternity of Jamaica, the Caribbean and the rest of the world.”

It wasn’t expected by the press and there was a moment of surprise before cynicism entered the minds of a few. Was the apology sincere? “If it wasn’t sincere I wouldn’t have done it,” Rowe said. “Jamaica Cricket Association decided to honour me and I thought before I accept it I should apologise.”

Life wasn’t easy for Rowe after that fatal tour. There are reports that he would hide in the Kingston club to watch Tests in Sabina Park. There was anger in the air. Time is a healer. “When I came back, I had to leave the country and go to the States,” Rowe said. “At that time the crowd reception was hostile but I have been back after that. I have been accepted and treated fairly. Even today, people were cheering for me.”

Rowe was heralded as one of the most elegant batsman the game had seen © Getty Images

That they did. The sparse crowd cried out his nickname “Yaga” as he walked out to the middle of the unveiling ceremony. Rowe, of course, had the crowds coming out in droves in his younger days. Tony Cozier still remembers Rowe’s triple-hundred at the Kensington Oval. “Gates were broken, walls were scaled and even high-tension electric cables were used by people to get in.” Rowe, himself, couldn't enter. “We had to be escorted in," Rowe told ESPNCricinfo. "It was a special day. I went on to score that 300.”

It was a six that he hit the day before that had excited the crowd into such fervour. Bob Willis was bouncing Rowe. “I don’t hook early in my innings.” Willis was trying to get him do it. One delivery reared up towards the face when Rowe hooked it off the peak of his cap and it went screaming over backward square-leg. It was a flat six. The crowd went wild. Rowe remembers it vividly. “Geoffrey Boycott was standing at the backward square-leg boundary and it flew barely a few feet over him. I had connected it really well and hit it hard.” The next day was a rest day. The word spread like fire. Rowe was in his 40’s and the crowd knew that there was going to be something special from him the next day. The talk spread from bar to bar on that rest day and it gathered momentum. It went over the boil the next morning and the whole of Barbados, almost, poured into the Kensington Oval

Rowe’s most famous knock was the 175 he hit in the World Series in Australia, organised by Kerry Packer, against Dennis Lillee and Co. It’s a stuff of folklore but it’s not Rowe’s best innings. He rates a 66 he hit in Sydney as his best. “The pitch was so green and they had Lillee, Thomson, Max Walker. The ball was flying and moving around. And I managed to play my shots. It was a great feeling. That 175 was my most dominating knock of course but I really cherish that 66 on that track.”

It wasn’t the rebel tour that killed Rowe’s career. The end had begun a while back. Rowe’s life almost fatally attracted tragedy. His knee gave way during a game in Trinidad, an eye disease was discovered in London and he had an allergy to grass, a perverse ailment to strike a cricketer. The knee injury, that happened in 1973, was wrongly diagnosed by a doctor who thought it was just a mild strain and the cast was removed.

“That was a mistake. It was a ligament tear and took me a year to really recover. I suffered because of that during the England tour.” The eye disease – a “rare case of stigmatism” – was found out almost accidentally in a restaurant by the manager Gerry Alexander. “I was peering into a menu and was holding it really close to my eyes when Gerry asked me what’s wrong with me. I hadn’t even realised my eye was affected.” The right eye had a perfect 20-20 vision but the left eye was giving up on Rowe. He tried spectacles but everything looked “oblong and hazy”. “I was told I was soft. I would call it bad luck.”

Having lost the fluency that he was known for, Rowe started to turn against himself. He couldn’t accept his game, hailed across the cricketing world as the most graceful batting seen in history, was drifting away from him. Paranoia seeped in. In a festive game in England, people had thronged the ground to see him bat. Rain came down to leave the pitch damp and Rowe refused to come out to bat. Michael Holding, a great fan of Rowe, wrote a revealing line. “He couldn’t be the Lawrence Rowe that people were expecting.” And he didn’t come out to bat. “The fear of failure gripped him,” Cozier said.

Was he a special batsman? “No-one better than him,” Cozier said. “No-one. He was the most graceful batsman that you could dream to see.” Rowe was blessed. He was then cursed. Greatness eluded him but luckily, on Monday, as West Indies took on India on the same ground where he had a dream debut, he found some sort of redemption. The man they called Yaga was all smiles at his Sabina Park. It felt good.

Mervin Richards: the brother of a king and the director of sports in Antigua's sports ministry © Mervin Richards

The story dates back nearly 50 years. Two boys were lying in bed, about to sleep, when the older of the two wrapped his arms around a cricket bat and told his younger brother, Mervin: “I wish they would one day pay us to play cricket”.

People who watched the brothers bat as teenagers still say Mervin Richards was the more stylish of the two with more finesse. “There were some people who would rather see me play,” Mervin, now 57 years old, says. “I was bit like Laxman or Azharuddin, wristy, you know.”

He is now the director of sports in the Ministry of Sports in Antigua. His brother, older to him by a year, is Viv Richards, the king of cricket. As Mervin tells their tale, you get the sense of how Viv grew to be a champion batsman, who was eventually knighted.

Their father was a prison warden. Their eldest brother, Donald, was a fast bowler who saw something special in Richards. Their father would throw leather balls at them when they were 10 years old, and they grew up without fear of the cricket ball. The younger kids, along with Richards, would finish their soft-ball cricket in the evening and vacate the field for the likes of Donald and the seniors. The only youngster who was allowed to play with the adults was Viv. “We would all sit up and take great pride in watching Viv attack the elders,” Mervin says. “It never occurred to us that ‘oh we weren’t allowed to play’. Obviously, looking back, Donald had spotted the talent in Viv.”

Viv used to play football as well, as a defender. Mervin remembers little incidents which revealed the character of Viv. “Suddenly he would charge up to the centre pitch, make couple of active passes, get forward and score a goal. He then would say, ‘see, this is what I was saying, this is what we need to do to win'. He was the captain and never liked losing.” Mervin says that Viv had a determination which set him apart from everyone. “He was always passionate about cricket. When our father, a strict disciplinarian, would order us not to play in the park over some issue, I would obey and sit out. But Viv couldn’t take the torture [of not playing]. He would be prepared to take the licks from Father later but would go to play. I have never seen him holding a football while sleeping but have seen him lie down with the bat many times.”

According to Mervin it was while playing in the park that Viv developed his signature whip across the line to deliveries even outside off stump. There used to be a fisherman at the straight down the ground and he didn’t like the ball landing in his area. “He would chop off the cricket balls and throw them back. And so Viv started to develop that shot through midwicket!”

Mervin picks the day Viv was named the captain of West Indies as his happiest moment from his brother’s career. “At that point of time West Indies cricket was still dominated by four big countries. The board could have awarded captaincy to a player from bigger country or someone with lighter skin. That’s what they wanted even though Viv was an understudy to Clive Lloyd. There were talks about Larry Gomes being given the job. When Viv got it, I was in USA studying, and was most happy.”

Mervin returned to Antigua and eventually became involved in sports administration. He also acted in two movies when he was young, and played football and pool. “I never focussed on one sport. I remember, years later while he was playing for West Indies, Viv once said to me, ‘you know, you should have stayed with cricket. I have seen worse players than you go on to play, become better and do well for West Indies’.” Nowadays Mervin works hard at his job, not wanting to let any talent go to waste. “I use myself as an example and try telling the boys to focus.” The telephone rings. It’s his mother. Mervin, who meets her every day for lunch, says with a smile, “Mom, I have some friends from India who have been asking about your other son.”

Cricket has moved away from the ARG © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Two tube lights lit up an empty stand at the far end. An empty beer bottle lies sunken on the corridor leading to the players’ dressing room. The grass is growing wildly in patches in the middle and a bare manual scoreboard hangs at one corner. International cricket has moved to swanky new Viv Richards Stadium and the historic Antigua Recreation Ground, where Viv Richards made the fastest Test hundred and Brian Lara piled up his world records, is slowly dying.

Cartwright Ireland, the security supervisor, is slumped on a chair outside the corrugated gates. He sits alone in near darkness. For 11 years he has opened the gate in the morning and locked it in the night. For “Corty” this night is yet another night of guarding nothingness. Nostalgia has a charming way of warming you up on solitary nights. “I was standing here when Garry Sobers walked out to greet Lara after he made his 375.” The place he points out is just outside the gate to the playing field but inside the complex. To its left is the famous Double Decker party stand, a two-tiered structure, where that famous cheerleader Laban ‘Gravy’ Benjamin would orchestrate revelries to the music of the DJ ‘Chickie’. When Richards blazed away during that ton against England, Chickie played, “Captain, the Ship is Sinking". One’s not sure what the England captain David Gower thought of it. Chickie has moved on to the new stadium but Gravy retired along with ARG.

The ‘Rec’, as the ARG was called, looks ramshackle, ignored and left to bleed to death by the administrators. If you have watched a game here you can understand why Richards described it thus: “It’s small, intimate and there is something very special about the whole place. I don’t think you will see anything like it again anywhere in the world.”

Corty gives more evidence from the crowd’s point of view. “You sit at the double decker stand and can yell out to your mate at the other end! You don’t need phones. The crowd made sure the players too heard their voice.” Corty himself played for the St John’s club in those days and has even taken out Richards. For a duck. “I was a left-arm seamer and I remember that ball moved away from Vivy who edged it.” That ball is now tucked away for posterity with a signature from Richards. He remembers the domestic games between the Islands, playing to a packed audience here. They now play some football and some local cricket in there.

In the previous decade, the members would come to the Rec in the evening and play dominoes. Even that has died down now. In fact, cricket is slowly disappearing off the streets and beaches of Antigua. It’s sad. “It’s more than sad,” says Corty. Meanwhile the night falls at the Rec. It actually fell in 2006 when it was mothballed to give way to a new stadium and briefly came alive to flicker for one last time in 2009, when it hosted a Test against England, but it’s all silent out there these days.

It’s a different Ambrose these days. Genial. Friendly. And someone who laughs a lot. © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

I wish Michael Atherton was there to see it. It’s past midnight and Curtly Ambrose is singing, dancing and creating quite a joyous ruckus in an Antigua casino. Atherton would have seen a deathly cold stare, pride-drenched sweat, and a windmill-wave of arms after he had fallen to yet another screamer; 17 times he succumbed to Ambrose in Tests. It’s a different Ambrose these days. Genial. Friendly. And someone who laughs a lot. “Atherton was not a bad player and he has scored hundreds against me,” Ambrose said. “But people only remember the number of times I got him out.”

Finally, after all these years, Ambrose is doing the things he wanted to do all his life. He never liked cricket but was pushed by his mother’s fanatic love for the game to take up the sport. “My mother basically forced me to play cricket. And then to try and please her, I did. And like they say, the rest is history. So I guess she knew I had a talent.”

He was a reluctant cricketer. “I never liked cricket. It was just a job.” Then how can someone who didn’t like the game go on to achieve greatness? “I am a proud man.” That’s it. No follow-ups. Nothing. It says everything that’s to say about him. When you probe further he adds, “My pride basically was my motivation. I want to be the best at whatever I do. I strive for excellence. I don’t like to lose. Once I decided cricket was going to be my job, I just wanted to be the best. It’s a lot of hard work.”

It took him two years to decide that cricket was going to be his job. On the day he was first selected for West Indies, he played basketball. “I wasn’t still serious.” The people in his village, Swetes, took the initiative to make him so. “They didn’t let me register into the basketball and football association any more. So that’s when I realised that if my villagers can be so protective and be so concerned about me being a cricketer then I said okay let me just take this thing serious.”

He was initially called a “little bird” as they thought he was like the “big bird” Joel Garner. The tall Ambrose laughs as he says that nickname. Back to the show at the casino. The little bird leaps out from the stage and enters a song-and-dance routine. He waves his arms, involves the audience and sings. The crowd respond. They laugh, they dance and they sing back. Ambrose can’t stop smiling. Behind him, Richie Richardson is quietly playing out his role of the rhythm guitarist. His wife is in the audience and dancing. Ambrose’s wife is lapping it all up, sitting in the chair. All around, the crowd go berserk. Ambrose beams. His band, Spirited, is going from strength to strength.

“I don’t like talking about cricket,” he says the next day. “As a matter of fact, Desmond Haynes said to me one time, that he had never met a cricketer like me. Because I don’t talk cricket. Other guys will talk cricket at breakfast, talk cricket at dinner. I don’t do that. Once I get to the cricket ground, I switch onto cricket. Once I leave the ground, I switch off. I don’t want nothing to do with cricket. So Haynes said to me that I am a strange person.”

Strange he might have been, but he was bloody intimidating. Was there any player he found a tough nut to crack? “David Boon of Australia was an extremely tough batsman. You know you have some batsmen who you can look at the eyes and know that they are not comfortable. It’s only a matter of time before you get him out. Boon is as tough as they come. Steve Waugh was very tough as well. At times, he could look out of sorts. But I can tell you, he’s tough. He’s not going to surrender.”

The obvious thing, then, was to ask about that famous spat with Waugh. It was a hair-raising moment: Ambrose staring down at Waugh as if he meant to hit, Waugh looking back icy cold, and Richardson trying to drag Ambrose out of the crime scene. “You know I am not usually like that. That particular series in 1995 we were in danger of losing our No.1 status. And we were behind in the series and I got a little frustrated. He said something to me that I didn’t like and I responded and we said a thing or two. But it started right there on the pitch and ended right there. We still had mutual respect between us.”

What were you really thinking at that moment? Would you have hit him? “Well I wanted to. I was so frustrated I wanted to vent it out. It was out of character because I am not like that.” Intimidation by that cold stare was his style though.

“I think every fast bowler should be aggressive and try to intimidate the batsman. Not verbally. I will stare at you and look at you cruel. Like I am gonna ... Sometimes I don’t mean a thing. I used to do that a lot. I stare a lot. It was part of my weapon. So you should intimidate them. Soften them up basically to get them out.

“But I don’t like sledging, I have never done that. I don’t think that is part of cricket. If you are good at what you do, you shouldn’t resort to sledging to be successful. Because if you do that to get success, then you know that you are not any good. So I let the ball do the talking. I will stare at you and look at you very mean and all that because it was part of my weapon.”

Then there were those special celebrations that came to be associated with Ambrose. “It was all in the heat of the moment. There was nothing that I planned. You react to the situation. Sometimes you look back and think wow you can’t believe that you are behaving like that. You can’t rehearse, you just react.” That was then. Ambrose is a lot more relaxed these days. Sing. Dance. Smile. Here is the all-new Ambrose.

A cricketer and a fireman: Anthony Martin's bed in the fire station in Antigua © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

If you call the fire station in Antigua to report a fire, chances are, it might be a West Indian cricketer who answers the phone. Anthony Martin bowls legbreaks for West Indies. He also fights fires.

“Martin is a character. He is excitable even off the field,” Ramnaresh Sarwan said with a laugh. The truth of that statement lies in a small fire station in the All Saints neighbourhood. It’s late in the evening when we reach there. A bright, shiny, red fire truck blocks the entrance. Behind it, two broad-chested men are having a chat. Martin, when he is not on national duty, would be sitting with them, talking animatedly about cricket. Until a phone rings in the front room. Sometimes, he drives the van and, at times, is with the men fighting the fire. At other times he is the man who answers the call. The firemen operate on three shifts: red, green and blue.

Martin is listed on the red shift. “It’s of course better for us if there are extra hands but we are proud that he is playing for West Indies,” says Sergeant Harry as he gives a tour of the small place. There is a large room with lots of beds and a wall-mounted TV. The shifts are 24 hours. If Martin isn’t there by the phone, he will be here, in this room, with his mates, resting and waiting for the distress call. Cricket fills the time. The Sergeant points out Martin’s bed. Two bats lie beside a bag, with some balls inside. “He is constantly flicking the balls,” says Daley, a colleague, who rates Martin’s bowling as “fair”. “He can get better and become a good bowler. He is constantly talking about the game and is very proud to represent West Indies. If he is given chances he will become a good bowler. He prides himself on his economy rate. Even in the games we play here, he doesn’t like to be hit.”

Martin may not possess the same talent as a Devendra Bishoo, but his is a heart-warming story: fireman to national cricketer. It happens in movies. Even then, during the climax, when the hero plays for the country it seems hard to digest. Here we are, in a small fire-station in Antigua, where nothing much happens. “It’s a quiet place. Trinidad can be crazy in comparison. There is nothing much that happens in Antigua,” Harry says. It’s a quiet town, known for its 365 beaches - one for every day of the year. The biggest fire that Harry saw was in the late 1990s when a paint factory blew up into flames. For the major part, they put out minor fires and take adequate precautions. Martin joined them eight years ago, when he was 20, and has proved to be a valuable member since.

“He handles himself well in emergency situations,” Harry says. “He is usually jumping around and excited, but during an emergency he knows what to do and does it well.”

“I play cricket because I love it,” Martin had told windiescricket.com in May. “I don’t play for money. I play for the love of the game. Even if I wasn’t being paid I would still be playing and I would still play with the same intensity.

“I know if West Indies has 11 players on the field with the kind of attitude I have and if we put in hard work in the nets then it won’t be easy to beat us.” His colleagues plan to make a banner with Martin’s name and go to the one-day game if he plays. Something like a fireman representing the entire region in cricket doesn’t happen every other day. Dousing a fire and bowling a legbreak; it’s all in a day’s work for Martin.

Fun in the sun ... and rain © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

As you walk up the alcohol-washed stairs to the Trini Posse stand, you can smell it, breathe it, hear it and finally see it as you reach the landing. Dance. Music. Sun. Rum. Beer. Sweaty swaying bodies. A fat DJ is expertly controlling the crowd and ramping up the music. Alcohol is on the house. Everywhere you see drunken eyes, screening themselves from the harsh sun, but almost possessed by the party spirit. Soca music. Hip hop. Topped up with that special shake of the posterior, Trini style.

No use beating around the bush here; you can definitely feel a definite sense of raw lust in the air. It’s everywhere. It’s in the eyes of the fans surrounding the scantily-clad cheer girls, it’s in the eyes and hands of intoxicated couples swaying away elsewhere. And yet it’s not seedy. At least it didn’t strike me that way. Perhaps I tell myself that to explain my presence there. It feels like a vibrant open atmosphere.

The rain has stopped play in the second ODI and the covers are on but the sun is beating down hard. It threatens to peel off my skin. I take refuge in iced rum. In West Indies, the drink is light and it’s loaded with ice-cubes. You feel you are licking ice with a bit of alcohol thrown in. I had asked for a double.

The attractive Amanda, a cheer girl, is dancing merrily. She looks around her, a touch shy, and half-shuts her eye-lids as she dances. Constantly, she looks at her fellow dancers and laughs. Men hover around her. The music reaches a crescendo. The girls huddle together and dance.

This is her second match, she says later, at the end of the second game. She is a make-up artist who was approached by a manager to do this jig. Do men trouble her? Does she get conscious? “That is something you have to get accustomed to. I have to be cool. You do have situations. Guys normally try to touch, you know. You have to tell them nicely not to do it. Most understand if you let them know. There is always someone who thinks he can come up to you and pull your hand and what not. But it also can happen when you are walking in the street.”

She hasn’t heard about IPL and its cheerleaders but she says she follows cricket a bit. The directions are clear; every time they play music, she has to just get up and dance. This rain interruption is an exception. The music is always on. So is the sun, though but her sunshields make for a delightful explanation. “You dress very little and drink a lot of booze. You don’t feel the sun.”

I try the latter but it doesn’t work. Don’t worry, I didn’t expose my adipose tissues. The DJ roars out the warnings: “All’yuh people clear the aisles. Else no music.” The music stops for a while and reluctantly people clear. “All’yuh people sitting on the rails, move.” The music stops and people move. He then announces that the umpires have inspected the pitch and cricket will begin soon.

The dancing begins. The swaying, shaking movements begin. "It's a Trini thing, in fact a Caribbean thing," says Amanda. “No one learns it. It's natural. We all know how to dance." Does she go to clubs, considering she dances here so much? "I don't go out that much. I am sure the other girls do."

Time for me to move to the press box. Is this stand, and the happenings there, an unnecessary distraction from the cricket and a sign of a sexist society or is it a harmless fun party atmosphere? I leave it for you to decide.