I love to tell and retell the Cup Match Story.It’s an old, old story that goes far beyond the annual battle betwen Somerset and St. George’s for the cricket supremacy of Bermuda, and possession of the priceless silver trophy that symbolises it.Cup Match this year of 2012 marks another significant milestone and with it comes more forcibly than ever the challenge to describe in a few words what Cup Match really is. Simply it is a Spirit.As I have stated before, it is the soul force, deeply rooted and emanating from the Emancipation on August 1, 1834 from Slavery. Generation after generation of carefree Bermudians have grown up without giving a second thought to what slavery was all about. But come Cup Match time, they let their hair down, and let the good times roll. I say let it go on for ever, as it most likely will.Personally I have been blessed, being able to be caught up in the evolution of Cup Match, especially during the last 80 years. I knew personally, and recorded over and over, interviews with many of the founders of the Cup Match; and with its movers and shakers on and off the field down through the years.Life in Bermuda during the first and second decades of the 20th Century was relatively simple. I was born when the horse and buggy era was peaking. Electricity was a rarity and likewise telephones. The one accessible phone in our neighbourhood belonged to the undertaker. The daily newspapers gave excellent coverage to the Cup Match. For proof, check their files up to the thirties.and forties. Then came motorisation and the electronic media in its wake.The first live coverage of Cup Match by radio was sensational, to say the least. Commentators whose names readily come to mind were the Evans Brothers, Ron and Don, and Stanley Gascoigne. In more recent times we had the likes of Winston J.R. Jones, Joe L. Brown and latterly Jim Woolridge. In their wake came Rick Richardson with periodic live television coverage., black and white, later colour TV with the technology for instant replay at the touch of a button.With all the foregoing rendered to the background of gradualism, the 2012 Cup Match is poised for a giant leap forward into the Digital World, with total accessibility to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and everything engrossed in that sesnstional world. To enable this, Somerset CC, according to its forward thinking host President Alfred May, backed up by St.George’s CC President Neil Paynter,, in league with the HSBC, the main sponsor of the classic Somerset will become a WiFi Hot Spot.But with all that these evolutionary changes embrace, the essence of Cup Match remains, encompassing the mantle of freedom and emancipation.As the 100th Anniversary of Cup Match loomed, and public interest in the classic having become so intense as to literally bring the commercial life of the country to a standstill, the Government by Act of Parliament declared the first day of Cup Match to be Emancipation Day, and the second day as Somers Day, commemorating the landing of Admiral Sir George Somers and other survivors from his wrecked ship Sea Venture.Their arrival on July 28, 1609 marked the beginning of the permanent settlement of Bermuda and the subsequent time frame for the “two Bermudas” that evolved over the next 300 or more years, comprising a large minority of white slave owners, and the other a majority of black slaves.Millions of black people were shipped from their native Africa and brought to this part of the world, put on auction blocks and sold to provide free labour for their captors. An estimated 4 million blacks did not make it to the New World. They lost their lives in the Middle Passage, while being transported in chains from Africa.On August 1, 1834, by Act of Parliament in Britain, all slaves in British territories were Emancipated.It should be easy to comprehend the joy and excitement of the slaves when Freedom Day came. The rejoicing was unbounded, even though the slaves or former slaves had no material possessions, only the clothes on their backs and their indomitable spirits to sustain them. They had no churches, schools, no infrastructure. But they built one, through the friendly unions, or friendly societies they formed in each community enabling them to care for one another, especially the sick and most importantly, to help bury their dead; and to educate orphans.It was those same “friendly unions” or “societies” now called Lodges, that spearheaded on August 1 each year after 1834 the celebration of “Freedom Day”. First there were church services, then parades, picnics, sports and other events that grew indefinably, phenomenally, all packing a soul force that culminated in 1902 into what is now Cup Match.