Security is tight in the West Indies. Photo / Reuters
Monique Devereux, former chief reporter at the Herald and now Christchurch correspondent for Radio New Zealand, is at the Cricket World Cup. She brings nzherald.co.nz regular news and views from the West Indies
I am not a terrorist. At least I wasn't on Tuesday. I can say this with confidence because on Tuesday I survived a rigorous security check.
There was obviously been a concern at some stage along they way that the Caribbean nations would not be able to provide
adequate security during the World Cup.
To compensate the ICC officials have gone completely bonkers over being secure.
Police are everywhere, guarding and checking out anyone who goes near the hotel housing all four cricket teams currently in Barbados.
Even the floor of the hotel the team is staying on has round the clock guards.
Although maybe that's just to stop any rouge flight attendants getting into the wrong room/toilet cubicle.
Getting into a cricket venue is not just difficult for the media and spectators.
Several police officers were also forced to empty their pockets and be scanned with a hand held metal detector this week which caused a huge furore.
The relatively new police chief (brought in to stamp out corruption no less) was very angry about his troops being embarrassed.
Barbadians in general are miffed too; these are generally friendly, happy people who's lifestyles don't normally include such tight controls.
Getting into a game venue takes a lot longer than you might expect due to the search process. Everything has to be taken out of bags, laptops are opened, wallets are opened. Sunscreen has to be applied to prove it's not a chemical weapon.
At one stage I was the only person going in the gates at the 3Ws Oval on Tuesday.
Five security guards swarmed around me. Everything was taken out of my three bags, all my recording equipment was opened and tested for bombs. My pen was unscrewed then tested on my notebook.
I was scanned and rescanned.
I applied my sunscreen, my nail varish, my lip gloss, my leave-in hair conditioner and my moisturiser. I took a sip from my water bottle and my ginger ale bottle and two sips of the small bottle of top quality Barbadian rum that somehow had got into my handbag.
After all that, some 15 minutes later, I was finally free to go, exhausted, but happy in the knowledge that I was no terror threat.
