Enamoured Bermuda just want to enjoy the experience

The passion might be right up there for the cricketers from the small island nation, but being amateurs does not help them improve the standard of their game.

“Amateurs we are most surely. We get to play cricket only on Saturday and Sunday and we train only for two hours, 4 to 6, and that too after work,” Romaine said.

“Bermuda has a 60,000-strong population and only 30-45 is the number of cricketers they work with,” he said in response to a query on his side’s disappointing show against England in a practice game when they were shot out for only 45 runs.

Romaine said getting enough matches is a problem in Bermuda as the island did not have enough wickets to play on.

“Bermuda was to get a few warm-up games of the World Cup but after the International Cricket Council inspected the wickets, it didn’t pass muster with them.

“Most of us play cricket only when we get outside the island and it certainly hurts us,” he said.

In the team, Dwayne Leverock is the one drawing a lot of mirth because of his size — he weighs 120 kg in socks and the assembled media drools and ridicules Bermuda for fielding a cricketer who doesn’t look the part of a World Cup where professionally-trained athletes are taking part.

“He is a policeman but you must understand, as I said, that all of us are amateurs. We are not professional athletes. So the only training he kind of gets is when he is chasing criminals,” the skipper said in defence of his teammate.

Romaine immensely praised Gus Logie, the former West Indian player, who had been helping Bermuda come up in the cricketing world.

“He has been an enormous influence. The basic thing he wants us to do is to learn to enjoy the game. He wants that to be the prime feeling while we are playing the game,” he said.