Cricket

I am willing to wager more than a few quid on a West Indies victory. Only a handful of England’s actors (skipper Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes and Stuart Broad) remain on the 2020 set. But Jason Holder has no fewer than seven of his 2017 West Indians, including …

The West Indies has had a phenomenal number of exceptional cricketers in its history. The captains have been mostly middling. I restricted the playbooks to those of Frank Worrell, Richie Benaud and Mike Brearley simply because they were known as thinking men—able in both the technical and ‘man-management’ aspects of …

It was reported that during the 2019 ICC World Cup, the England team pulled up and did some soul searching. They revisited videos of sessions featuring themselves—not at play—but talking about their feelings. Their feelings. It takes a lot of courage to do that; courage and trust. I’m thinking here …

I’m trying to outline the philosophies that shaped the way three outstanding captains approached leadership: Richie Benaud, Michael Brearley and now, Sir Frank Worrell. Born in 1924, dead at 42 in 1967, Sir Frank was an outstanding citizen of the West Indies, whose stature transcended cricket. He began his international …

I had been reading Mike Brearley’s 1985 classic, ‘The Art of Captaincy’, and re-reading ‘Frank Worrell’, by Ernest Eytle. It struck me in both that in a sense, like Richie Benaud, they did not become captains of teams, but rather, they moulded teams out of collections of individuals. In their …

Practically all the tributes that have congregated in memory of Sir Everton Weekes have come from cricketers and sports writers. They list his age, his career statistics and his batting style. Some have recounted an encounter. Cricket reporters tend to give the numbers; cricket writers are more interested in telling …

Cricket, like everything else, goes through troughs and peaks. Teams have floundered and risen. West Indies had malingered in the state of ‘potential’ for a long time, relying on talk without action, but perhaps with the world in one of its states of upheaval and change, it might be that …

“[…] In his career, Sir Everton played 48 Test matches and made 4,455 runs at an average of 58.61 per innings. This included a world record five consecutive centuries in 1948: scores of 141 against England in Jamaica, followed by scores of 128, 194, 162 and 101 in India. “In …

“[…] In carrying out its assessments, the accounting and management consulting firm of Pannell Kerr Foster (PKF) uncovered some illustrations of questionable executive standards and practices. It verified and emphasised the need for drastic operational reorganisation and realignment, with an urgent need for improved risk assessment and cash flow management. …

“[Brian] Lara describes himself as ‘grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from Lenny Kirton,’ whom he remembers as ‘a good man’ but ‘very hard to please’. It was, he says, the coach’s way of ensuring that the talented teenager ‘keep a level head, be humble and keep working …

Having sent the Irish home with the taste of defeat fresh in their mouths, Kieron Pollard’s victorious West Indies troops are preparing to fly out to Sri Lanka this weekend. After Afghanistan, India and Ireland, the resurgent Caribbean cavaliers must feel fairly confident of their chances of yet another victory …

The second T20I in St Kitts. Andrew Balbirnie contrives only to send his attempted slog off Romario Shepherd skywards. The sure-handed Dwayne John Bravo settles under it. The overly excited 25-year-old gets in the way. The chance goes a-begging. The Ireland skipper benefits from an early reprieve. Bravo’s bemused expression …