Amid a beautiful, throbbing gathering in the Trini Posse Stand at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, sits a serenely radiant young lady with her little daughter propped on her knee. Those around her can't get enough of limin' (Caribbean for serious grooving) in the intoxicating mid-afternoon heat, but Mrs Dillon is firmly fixed upon the cricket. In a notebook, she studiously keeps the score for the West Indian bowlers, with a particularly sharp eye on a loose-limbed chap who bowls and glares like a twenty-first-century Courtney Walsh. Life-partner, agent, business associate, friend, and unofficial coach, Sophia likes to keep Mervyn on the right track. She is on the ball. We're into day three of the second Test between India and West Indies and she is upset with the end Mervyn was made to bowl from last evening. "I told him, 'How come you doing that, Mervyn? The best spell of your life was against South Africa last year, from the other end?' So he was like, 'you have a point'." He's done alright for today, though. "Much better. Got a wicket in his third over. And his figures for the morning spell were ... just a moment ... 5-2-3-1. And then they took him off!"

Sophia analyses cricket. She scores for all West Indies matches over the radio, regardless of whether Mervyn is playing or not. She likes to tell Mervyn what's gone right, what's gone wrong, sometimes "give him a rub or a hot bath." Her niftiest piece of advice yet resulted in big Inzamam-ul-Haq's dismissal. "See, Inzamam always likes to go after Mervyn. So I told Mervyn to, you know, allow him a go and then try a slower ball. It worked!"

"I'm also his agent, you know." Sophia recently arranged a bat contract with Indian manufacturers BDM. The 9 in the first innings had been Mervyn's highest score in a while. Hidden talent with the bat, this Mervyn? "Well, I better not say anything."

Sophia's romance with Mervyn began, predictably, at the cricket. It happened in Jamaica, Mervyn was then twelfth man of the Trinidad team - "a waterboy" - and they smiled plenty at each other when he "spent so much time on the bench." In September this year, their marriage will be two years old. They already have a girl, Destiny, and if and when a son arrives, he is to be called Pace.

It hasn't been all rosy for the Dillons. Earlier this year, Mervyn was sent back home from the tour to Sri Lanka, when, deterred by political tumult in the country, he asked to be excused from a practice session. Mervyn didn't want to tour in the first place, but Wes Hall, President of the WICB, had convinced him to. "We were very worried when he came back. You know there have been two players sent back home and they never played for West Indies again. The press made a big deal about it. People on the street were asking me, 'lady, your husband was sent back?' It was a strange Christmas." Mervyn started counselling with a pastor, who eventually wrote a letter to the WICB advising that "Mervyn is not a bad fellow."

The Dillons had needed to take an even more serious stock of their life when Mervyn broke down with an ankle injury on the 2000-01 tour to Australia. Amid growing concerns about his future in cricket, they decided to set up a natural foods restaurant. ("Mervyn is a country boy, you know.") Fresh Approach, she beams, "is like No. 1 in Port-of-Spain now."

Mervyn has just started a next spell and Sophia needs to get back to the job. On the inside flap of her notebook, the following words are childishly doodled with a black felt pen: Cricket Lovely Cricket.

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden.com India. His reports will appear here throughout the Test series.

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