The West Indies cricket team toured England for a two-match Test series and a three-match ODI series from 6 to 26 May 2009. They toured in place of Zimbabwe.
At the start of the summer, the English players at a meeting identified this West Indian visit as pivotal to their momentum-making efforts for the Ashes later that season.
Famous quotes containing the words west indian, west, indian, cricket, team and/or england:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“We joined long wagon trains moving south; we met hundreds of wagons going north; the roads east and west were crawling lines of families traveling under canvas, looking for work, for another foothold somewhere on the land.... The country was ruined, the whole world was ruined; nothing like this had ever happened before. There was no hope, but everyone felt the courage of despair.”
—Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968)
“Ha ha! ha ha! This world doth pass
Most merrily I’ll be sworn,
For many an honest Indian ass
Goes for a unicorn.”
—Unknown. Fara Diddle Dyno (l. 1–4)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Romeo. I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio. And so did I.
Romeo. Well, what was yours?
Mercutio. That dreamers often lie.
Romeo. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
Mercutio. O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Why should I go to England with her? Because you bid me, or because she wishes it,—or simply because England is the most damnable, Puritanical, God-forgotten, and stupid country on the face of the globe?”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)