Before the Brat Summer, there was Hustle Culture.
Diary of a CEO reels. Mark Wahlberg's daily routine. Dubai-based influencers flexing (rented) wealth. All of which are still going, of course. Don't you see - hustle culture never dies.
But amid the glorification of unreasonable work hours and unsustainable sleeping patterns under the banner of "rise and grind" was a central pillar that, ultimately, spoke of a broken society. One that needed to be gamed as much as played. Where all you could really do was gamble and barter for incremental moments of success. Success that was fleeting, merely leading to another stage of the cycle with no guarantee of happiness the more you went around.
Earlier this week, Cricket West Indies chief executive Johnny Grave told BBC Stumped that hosting the T20 World Cup last month and with England to come at the end of 2024 makes it "three good financial years" in a row after Covid decimated the business. The visits of England and India in 2022 and 2023 were crucial money spinners.
Time to put the word out there that Caribbean cricket is back? Not quite. The success of those years will only really be felt in the upcoming fallow ones of 2025 and 2026, when CWI can at least continue their investment in infrastructure across the men's and women's game, and reinforce their grassroots systems, while feeling the pinch. India are due to return in 2027 to replenish the pockets and on the grind goes.
It's galling to think of the governing body of a Test nation operating on such gig-economy terms. But as most with the power to fix a broken system shrug their shoulders, West Indies crack on. After the ECB agreed to three extra T20Is on 2023's limited overs tour, they asked if they could assist with anything this Test tour. CWI, sensing the need to future-proof what Test stocks they have, asked for help in facilitating an Under-19 tour to the UK.
For the first time, maybe ever, CWI as a body feel more in step with its players, who are among the most accomplished traversers of increasingly absurd terrain. And it was one of them in Jason Holder who was central to West Indies' best day of a series that has already passed them by.
Two outstanding catches at the end of Friday at Edgbaston supplemented a 59 from Holder that did more than just delay an impending collapse. An opening stand of 76 became 115 for 5, and thoughts immediately turned to Sunday's botch job in Nottingham. Holder, with the familiar help of Joshua Da Silva in a stand of 109, were able to stave it off. With England 38 for 3 at stumps, West Indies' 282 does not look as light as it initially seemed.
This was Holder's first half-century in 16 months. But much like West Indies cricket as a whole, the truth lies a little deeper. An unbeaten 81 against South Africa came just eight innings ago before two Tests against India were followed by a brief sabbatical from the format at the start of this year. After rejecting a CWI contract, Holder opted out of the tour of Australia to ply his trade in the ILT20, citing practice for the upcoming T20 World Cup.
As the world lamented another nail in the coffin of Test cricket, Holder made it clear his Test career was not over. Those words were backed up with a stint in County Cricket for Worcestershire. Not that they needed to be, of course. The 32-year-old, weighing up financial gain and personal preference, happened upon a happy medium for him.
It felt oddly in sync in a fractured world that at 5:17pm - the time Holder was yorked by a late-swinging delivery from Gus Atkinson - Nicholas Pooran, arguably the most talented batter of his generation and yet without a single Test cap, rocked up at Headingley.
Just 36 hours earlier, his MI New York had been knocked out of the MLC 2024. Now, he was donning the purple of Northern Superchargers for the start of a £125,000 stint. Cold work for some, necessary for a player who continues to gamble on himself - and win.
Holder came up short of his own gamble out in the middle here. Alzarri Joseph's brief, breezy cameo meant three more partnerships at most. The former West Indies Test captain had grand ambitions of being "more expressive", flicking through his options and setting a path for the future… one which was destroyed in an instant by Atkinson's yorker.
"At the stage when I got out, I was trying to get past the two spells, of Woakes and Atkinson," Holder explained of his thinking at the time. "The ball was starting to do a little bit more; it was quiet for a bit but then it started to swing a bit more.
"I knew Woody was deep into his workload in terms of the amount of overs he was asked to bowl. Obviously coming with a short ball plan on a very slow wicket, it takes a lot of effort. I wasn't really expecting him to come back too soon after, so maybe Bashir would have come back and I'd try to push the game on a little bit more."
The calculations were sound. Holder had looked settled when Wood tried to go at him earlier, and largely dominated the 27 deliveries he had previously faced from Bashir, which included stepping to the off spinner and planting him into the sightscreen for six. Their return would have signalled a mini-win that could in turn have lifted West Indies to 350.
Though Kraigg Brathwaite had notched a tidy 61 and Da Silva had looked steady for his 49, Holder was far better equipped than two red-ball specialists for the situation after the top-order collapse, and the circumstances that lay ahead.
Holder only added five runs to his score after Da Silva's dismissal. All the grinding and computing he had done for the late charge had come to nothing. And it was ultimately not enough to cover for the Kirk McKenzie's shortcomings and Alick Athanaze's frustrating decision to try and pull a ball not quite there that was always going to be the last ball before lunch.
Just as it is in the system, this match will require constant ducking and diving. That West Indies ground and ground some more to finish day one in a good position in this Test puts them no closer to being surer as a Test nation. But as the game continues to shrug, they continue to hustle.