Sammy and George

Will this be another classic West Indian story?

Darren Sammy's seven wickets no doubt sparked party scenes on the beautiful island of St Lucia: it will also be one of the talking points if West Indies hold out for an amazing win. If that happens it will only further jettison his already famed status as St Lucia's top sportsman.

There is isn't much association to cricket where Sammy comes from. Born in the south of the island, his first bat was made of coconut frond stems while he couldn't play at weekends because he was a Seventh Day Adventist.

St Lucia's second best sportsperson is Nadine George. The MBE and bludgeoning opening bat for West Indies Women's also holds down a job as a marine coast guard, tracking down drug smugglers by day. If only the WICB would pull their finger out and get more international games then she might break more records. Read more here.

Lucia's finest

So the West Indies didn't exactly get off to the start they wanted in the Super 8s.

Every bar I have passed here in Barbados has been blaring out local radio phone-ins and discussions on the performances from their team. Brian Lara to bat up the order? The inclusion of Dwayne Smith? Give credit to Corey Collymore's bowling?

How they could do with the might of Nadine George. Nadine was the first West Indian to score a ton for the national women's team. She's also in the St Lucian Marine Unit and masters an 80-foot coastal vessel, patrolling the seas on search and rescue missions as well as tracking down drug traffickers. She's an amazing woman and not to be messed with: she's made bowlers cry in the middle; she wields a machine gun in her day job; she's got an MBE. I tentatively tracked her down in St Lucia before she adjudicated the England-Kenya man-of-the-match award.

You can listen to the interview in Podcast 7. Click here for more.

By George...

Listen to Nadine's interview here - podcast 7.

Nadine George is still the only player to have scored a century in any form of the game for the West Indies when she bludgeoned 118 on her Test debut in Karachi thirteen years ago. "That's definitely been the highlight of my career to date and I just hope I can go and break more records in the future," she says.

Thanks to her success with the West Indies, she was awarded the MBE by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in 2005 after being recommended by Professor Hilary Beckles, a prominent lecturer and historian on West Indies cricket.

Darren Sammy may be the only recognised sportsman on the island, while Brian Lara's mother was born in St Lucia but George is known throughout the Caribbean region – mainly for her power hitting as an opening batsman.

That she holds down a job with the St Lucian Marine Police also pays testament to her tough approach to cricket. "I have five brothers as well," she admits. "All these aspects have made a difference to my game."

She started her professional career in 1988 and has since been promoted to Sergeant in charge of operations where her day-to-day tasks include patrolling the island's seas. And it gets better: she is also Master of an 80ft coastal vessel. "We are mainly tasked with drug intervention coming up from South America and the chain of Caribbean islands," says George, who recently completed her first search and rescue, 26 nautical miles off the St Lucia coastline.

On the pitch, it was in Jamaica during the Nineties that opponents really took notice of George. An opposition bowler came on for her first over and was smashed for four consecutive boundaries. The bowler then knelt down in the middle of the wicket as the game was halted for a while.

Four years later in an ICC qualifying tournament in Holland she was still unaware of what had happened that day. After scoring a duck, one of the coaches came out of the pavilion and asked: "why is it that you can make bowlers cry and still manage nought?" George thought that the bowler had been ill but in reality it was the way George had treated her bowling.

Although she has her place beside the famous three W's (Walcott, Worrell and Weekes) at the walk of fame in Barbados, she still has visions of scoring an ODI century "and then looking forward to going for a world Test record score." Lara achieved that mark and you wouldn’t bet against George doing the same.