St Lucia, West Indies

On Tuesday I headed out to St Lucia in the West Indies with a couple of colleagues for a meeting with England team management. It's tough, but someone had to go...seriously, it was work! Because of the timing, it had to be this week - fortunately the team were in a resort in St Lucia rather than a generic hotel in downtown Karachi (one of the team's least favourite destinations).

We arrived mid-afternoon on Tuesday into Barbados airport and then flew on to Castries, St Lucia. The weather was hot and humid and everywhere we went things were still being prepared for the World Cup - which started the next day! One of the grounds the team was supposed to practice lost its accreditation for not being up to scratch - just the day before the team was meant to practice there! As I understand it, not unusual for the laid-back Caribbean and proving to be quite a challenge for the World Cup Organising Committee. The resort was not quite the usual team standards, but still pretty good. From my balcony -



From the pool looking up towards our rooms -



The restaurant where we had breakfast -



On the beach in front of the resort -



Wednesday was scouting locations for a photoshoot, team practice, the photo shoot (with Kevin Pietersen), the meeting with team management and dinner with KP, his manager and some other ECB people.

Team practice at Gros Islet -



Thursday was team practice again, and work all afternoon in the lobby before a quick swim (couldn't go to St Lucia without at least hitting the pool!) and then dinner with some sponsors and journalists.

On Friday we went to Beausejour Stadium for England's first game against New Zealand -


Unfortunately we had to leave straight after the first innings to get to the airport and catch our flight back to London and cold weather!