When­ev­er I do train­ing pre­sen­ta­tions and em­cee du­ties here in Trinidad, I do a brief self-in­tro­duc­tion. I’d usu­al­ly end it with my ice­break­er. “I am a Guyana Ama­zon War­riors sup­port­er.” Cue the good-na­tured laugh­ter and pan­tomime boo­ing. All good fun. I think I may need a new ice­break­er.

Feel­ings have been run­ning high since a flood­light fail­ure at Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um in Guyana short­ened Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers’ game against the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als. TKR seemed poised to set the Roy­als a big to­tal, with Nicholas Pooran–the sweet­est strik­er of the ball in short crick­et and sure­ly the best bat­ter in the world in T20—seem­ing­ly mo­tor­ing his way to an­oth­er cen­tu­ry in the com­pe­ti­tion.

By the time the lights came on hours lat­er, the game had been ad­just­ed to five overs. David Miller led Bar­ba­dos’ charge in knock­ing off the runs and knock­ing out TKR. TKR fans were apoplec­tic.

They im­me­di­ate­ly ac­cused GAW of en­gi­neer­ing the par­tial black­out to elim­i­nate TKR be­cause the Guyanese feared their team. Even the me­dia got in on the act, lean­ing in­to the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry and ask­ing in the many pieces pub­lished on TKR’s elim­i­na­tion whether Guyana sab­o­taged TKR.

The schaden­freude was thick when St Lu­cia Kings beat the War­riors in the fi­nal. “Lights out for Guyana Ama­zon War­riors” teased the head­line in one news­pa­per. The im­por­tant jour­nal­is­tic de­tails of who won, the fran­chise’s maid­en cham­pi­onship, and the in­cred­i­ble sport­ing year that St Lu­cia is hav­ing took a dis­tant sec­ond to take plea­sure in the War­riors’ loss.

St Lu­cia should have been the main char­ac­ter but turned out to be the sub­plot. That is a sport, and I don’t have a prob­lem with it. I’m an Ar­se­nal fan. We take plea­sure in the fail­ures of lo­cal ri­vals Tot­ten­ham and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, our biggest ri­vals in the 90s.

And let’s get a few things straight. One, the ire of TKR fans to­wards the Guyanese hosts was un­der­stand­able. Root­ing for every oth­er team that Guyana played was al­most a sport­ing oblig­a­tion. GAW fans would have done the same. Be­ing an­gry at the Prov­i­dence fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment team is al­so un­der­stand­able.

In flood­lit games, your pow­er sup­ply may be the most crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture. Good fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment is hav­ing a back­up sys­tem that would have the py­lons pow­ered again af­ter on­ly a brief in­ter­rup­tion, ide­al­ly 15 min­utes. CPL said in a state­ment the next day that an in­cor­rect restart time was ini­tial­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the me­dia and the pub­lic.

That fed sus­pi­cions that the pow­ers were bend­ing over back­wards to ac­com­mo­date the Roy­als, against their own rules. CPL owns the com­mu­ni­ca­tions sna­fu. All of this said, talk of sab­o­tage makes no sense, for a num­ber of rea­sons. The first is that flood­light fail­ures hap­pen in sports.

The lights went out at a CPL game at Sabi­na Park in Ja­maica in 2015. All of them—to­tal black­out—un­like Prov­i­dence, where lights in three of the six tow­ers failed. The rules of base­ball cov­er flood­light fail­ure, which al­so hap­pens in foot­ball and ten­nis.

The plot to cut the lights was far-fetched. Are we to be­lieve that some big­wig in Guyana, not­ing TKR’s progress, or­dered his min­ions to pull a switch? That’s sil­ly sea­son stuff. The faulty ca­ble was un­der­ground. Who did the ground staff put up to it? Mis­ter Mole?

The par­tial black­out al­so in­con­ve­nienced Bar­ba­dos, lest we for­get. If TKR had got up in­to the high 220s as seemed like­ly, it would have giv­en them a good plat­form to win the game.

How­ev­er, it does not mean that Bar­ba­dos couldn’t chase it down. High­er to­tals have been chased down in T20 crick­et. TKR were favoured, but the match was not a gimme for them.

What’s iron­ic about some fans rais­ing sus­pi­cions about the restart time is that they seemed hap­py to see the Roy­als elim­i­nat­ed with­out fac­ing a ball, based on the team’s rel­a­tive stand­ings on the pre­lim­i­nary ta­ble.

No one would have heard a peep about sab­o­tage if the game had timed out and TKR had ad­vanced. Sports sup­port is about pas­sion. Nev­er­the­less, War­riors and TKR fans need to lay aside their beef and sum­mon some hap­pi­ness on be­half of St Lu­cia for their won­der­ful sport­ing year.