Cup Match 2016 is less than three weeks away and how we wish we had more time. But time waits for no one, and so it is inevitable that the Annual Classic goes ahead with the spectre of Fiqre Crockwell hanging over it.

Not only has the murder of the St David’s, St George’s Cup Match and former Bermuda batsman on June 20 brought cricket to a standstill, literally, but it has also dampened enthusiasm for the biggest sporting event that this island hosts.

Not the two-day holiday. Bermudians love a holiday — don’t we all — and there is no doubt that related events in the build-up to July 28 and 29 will go down a treat, especially for reggae music fans, who stand to be truly entertained by the likes of the internationally renowned Beenie Man, Jah Cure, Sanchez and Bermuda’s own Collie Buddz.

But it is the actual cricket itself that does not whet the appetite. And we had been so looking forward to the cricket, if for no other reason than to discern that 2015 was a figment of our imaginations and that St George’s were not really all that bad after all.

What the Bermuda Heroes Weekend night of the Eighth Annual All White Party accomplished was to rob Cup Match of one of its heroes.

The country mourned when the news filtered through that yet another young black man had been murdered, invariably by yet another young black man. History has shown, though, that the national mourning period is all too brief, as two more young black men were shot and injured almost two weeks to the day.

It is a similar callous indifference to life as can be seen after we have fatalities on the road, as we so ridiculously tend to do. We collectively pause and say how sorry we are for the family, but within 24 hours lunatics from all demographics arm themselves with bikes, cars and mobile phones on wheels to terrorise our nation.

But two communities are still in mourning and it is incumbent on us to have more than a degree of empathy with them — St David’s islanders and St Georgians. The hurt and sense of loss will last for a good while.

Whatever your thoughts on Fiqre Crockwell, this should be a Black Armband Cup Match, for his death cuts right to the core of what is destroying Bermuda.

Unmitigated violence, social repression, widespread intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, Bible-bashing, general apathy — and that is before the politicians are let loose to get at each others’ throats without moving the conversation forward.

This country is populated by so many angry people, young black men included, who are a trigger movement away from snapping. Pressures at home, pressures at work, pressures earning a living, pressures justifying their existence, pressures preserving their existence.

How did it come to this? Or has it always been this way? The difference being that now people are dying.

The answers and solutions are thin on the ground. The police are trying and the political parties are sending out their statements of condolence. Good for them. But none of this has made any headway into what plagues us most; nor will it do so before the toss is taken by Jordan DeSilva and OJ Pitcher in 20 days’ time.

So we mourn. And we take that mourning to Somerset Cricket Club come Cup Match time in the hope that the bonhomie that is generally felt by the players at the end of two days of labour can be transformed right throughout the occasion, and into the bleachers to the fans whose general fixation is with red or blue.

Now more than at any time in the past, the real meaning of Cup Match needs to shine through: community, sharing, love, compassion, togetherness. The call now is for red and blue.

St George’s Cricket Club are hurting. Not because they were so poor in 2015, but because one of theirs is no longer with us.

For that reason they can be given a pass this year — the players who were so clueless and so poor at Wellington Oval 12 months ago and the selectors, too, who were so narrow-minded in their view as to what makes a good cricketer for the occasion of occasions.

This Cup Match should not be about who wins or loses; it should be about sending a constant reminder to the country that we are killing ourselves in droves and that we seem to be OK with that.

How better to send a message that it’s not OK than for St George’s to symbolise the loss of Fiqre Crockwell by taking to the field a man short — Somerset, too, for that matter, because Crockwell spent the past football season as a registered player with the 2014-15 champions.

Eleven to bat, ten to field.

We can only pray that the hierarchies of both clubs, the two biggest on the island, just might think outside the box and act as leaders by authorising the ultimate of protests against the disintegration of our society from that which was once so caring and understanding in what appears a bygone era to what we have now: me first, everyone else last.