Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Fire in Babylon (PG) 6.5

Fire in Babylon (2010): Feature documentary about the great West Indies cricket team of the 1970's/80's. (7.2)

Director: Stevan Riley
Writer: Stevan Riley
Stars: Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Michael Holding, Colin Croft

I grew up reading (okay, barely understanding the English sports page) about the fearsome West Indian cricket team. Not having seen any TV coverage (we didn't have TV back then), I hadn't much seen any of them play, so it was nice to see some of the match footage. I guess, I learned from this documentary that Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson showed the Windies how the bowling should be intimidating. I would have liked to have seen the famous "Michael Holding to Jeff Boycott" over. As a documentary, it has a lot more than just cricket footage ... in that famous laid-back island style, which is great. But I'm puzzled by the fact that they didn't talk about the two limited-over world cup titles the team won during the same era. Towards the end, do they sing their own praises a tad bit too much? I dunno. Then again, for the rest of the world, West Indies were (still are?) the second favorite team after their own team. I'm sorry that _that_ team never came to Sri Lanka as we didn't have Test status back then. I think, the director could have used other voices other than the team members. It would have been nice to have heard from those who played against that team. My Rating: 6.5