Dear Bermuda, you sun-kissed mid-Atlantic paradox where cricket bats swing with the zeal of a gospel choir and football pitches cradle dreams bigger than our 21-square-mile speck of paradise.

In 2025, we are still playing England’s games with such passion you would swear we patented them — all while trying to polish our history shinier than a Cup Match trophy. The irony is thicker than a fish sandwich from Art Mel’s — and the punchline?

We’ve chucked Sir George Somers into the historical dustbin like he’s the antagonist in a pirate B-movie, yet we cling to cricket and football — two sports that scream “colonial roots” louder than our beloved town crier himself.

Cricket first, because nothing says Bermuda like Cup Match, our two-day carnival of swizzles and sixes. Somerset and St George’s go at it like gladiators, squabbling over lbw calls and who gets the last mussel pie.

Long before politics stirred the pot, this was our island’s glue — Black and White Bermudians turning an English game into a proper Bermudian bash. No one was raging against its colonial origins; they were too busy smashing boundaries and belting out Bermuda Is Another World. But in 2020, the powers that be ditched Somers Day from Cup Match, as if Sir George’s 1609 shipwreck single-handedly invented our woes. Newsflash: his crash gave us the island to play cricket on. Banning him is like throwing your stove away because someone burnt your toast.

Then there’s football, another British import we have claimed like it’s our national birthright. Think of the legends — players who didn’t just kick balls but kicked down racial walls with the gusto of ancient warriors. They took pitches from Hamilton to Hammersmith and made them Bermudian, hoisting our flag across seas. They didn’t curse the game’s English roots; they made it their own, proving that freedom is about charting your course, not torching the map.

Yet, somehow, Somers is the fall guy, as if his 400-year-old shipwreck is keeping us from the World Cup. It’s like blaming Shakespeare for your bad wi-fi.

Let’s give Sir George his moment, with a wink and a nod to our own absurdity. The man didn’t exactly plan to wreck his Sea Venture on our reefs in 1609. It was less “heroic conquest” and more “whoops, my ship’s on the rocks”. But that cosmic fumble gave us Bermuda — the stage for our cricket epics and football triumphs. We’re out here playing cricket like it’s a religion, speaking English with fiery passion, and running our government like it’s Westminster’s cousin, yet Somers is the problem?

It’s like trashing your car because it came from a dealership.

The real comedy is our historical spring cleaning. We axed Somers Day to “decolonise”, but cricket — England’s darling — gets a free pass. We couldn’t pick a National Hero from a line-up of dozens because, apparently, one littered, another didn’t recycle and a third didn’t predict TikTok’s rise. By erasing Somers, we have not only fractured Cup Match’s unity but left our history so sparse it could fit on a postcard. We’re so obsessed with sanitising the past that we’ve forgotten how to embrace it — shipwrecks, struggles, and all.

Bermuda’s magic has always been our knack for taking history’s messy bits — colonialism, slavery, storms — and weaving them into something uniquely ours. Cricket and football aren’t just sports; they are proof we can take an English script and make it sing with Bermudian soul. Sir George didn’t hand us oppression; he handed us an island to squabble over, to play on, to claim.

So let’s pour a libation to the old sailor, not because he was flawless, but because his blunder gave us the chance to be gloriously, chaotically, proudly Bermudian. Maybe it’s time to stop scrubbing history and start chuckling at its beautiful, tangled mess.

• Gladwyn Simmons is a member of The Emperial Group, espousing unity in the community world vibe, fighting with peace and not for it