Once upon a time, they say, Fidel Castro played a game of cricket. It was in 1998, when Castro, then 71, was taking a short tour of Barbados. He and the prime minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, were travelling from Bridgetown up to Paynes Bay on the west coast, where they were due to unveil a memorial to the men and women who died in the bombing of Air Cubana flight 455 22 years earlier. On the way they passed a cricket match. And, as the one eyewitness account we have put it, “suddenly, all the security cars and media were put into a spin as they were diverted to the cricket pitch”. Castro took up a bat and asked Arthur to bowl to him.
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