Shakib’s Jamaica won CPL title

Sitting on the Jamaica Tallawahs team bus in Port-of-Spain heading to Queen’s Park Oval for the 2013 Caribbean Premier League semifinals and finals in Trinidad, then 27-year-old Chadwick Walton was shadowing the team’s newest addition Kumar Sangakkara, who had signed as an overseas replacement player for the playoffs in place of Pakistan’s Ahmed Shehzad.

Walton, a fellow wicketkeeper, was looking to gain insight into what made Sangakkara tick.

How did he play those silky drives? How did he pick fellow Tallawahs and Sri Lanka team-mate Murali’s doosra from behind the stumps? Instead, the experience hanging around the pair of Sri Lankans on the way to the Tallawahs title-winning run was memorable to Walton for altogether different reasons.

A little bit of everything is being talked about on the team bus when you’re around athletes, Walton recalls. But these two, it was mostly business and family.

So that stood out to me because you see these persons on TV and you idolise them and now you sit in a room having dinner with them and listening to the type of conversations. I didn`t know what to expect so it really stood out to me.

His first two ODIs followed later that year in South Africa during the Champions Trophy with the first-choice players still on strike.

In the years since, Walton has made several touring squads, including the 2013 tour to India for Sachin Tendulkar’s farewell series and the subsequent tour of New Zealand where he played in three ODIs.

Despite the limited appearances and his ensuing academic pursuits, Walton still holds out hope that the window on his international career has not come to a close.