Blind leading the blind’ – how Jamaica lost its love for Test cricket
Jeff Dujon was four years old when his father took him to Sabina Park for the first time. There, Dujon would train for hours, as his father sat in one of the colorful chairs set up by the Jamaica Cricket Association beyond the boundary line. It didn’t matter if Dujon was restless or bored. That was how he would learn the basics, his father had decided, and that was what he would do. The youngster was at the park for so much of his time that he would bump into Jamaican Test greats like Gerry Alexander, Jackie Hendriks, Reg Scarlett, and Allan Rae at the ground or, sometimes, in the dressing rooms. For the boy, this meant “listening to these guys just talking cricket, and as a cricketer, you listen and you learn every little thing you see”. A few years later, Charles Joseph, a former member of the ground staff at Sabina Park, saw Dujon batting. Joseph, who worked at the ground for 49 years, told everybody who would listen that “Jeff is going to play for the West Indies.” Ten years later, Dujon was picked as a wicketkeeper-batsman in the West Indies team.…