Tag Archives: Earl Best

A double-century on debut! And in Asia to boot! That’s the stuff of which West Indian boyhood dreams are made. As well as come-from-behind West Indian victories.  Guardian cricket reporter Vinode Mamchan did not seem to know about these dreams. Or to care about them. On television on Friday evening, …

If you plan to be a journalist in voice or vision media at the BBC, be prepared to spend a full three months merely learning names. Important people, places, common foreign words and phrases and, of course, commonly mispronounced words like ‘epitome’ and ‘anemone’. One wonders if any such arrangements …

Dear Kieron, Wherever you happen to be in the world, you would not have failed to watch the First Test action between Kraigg Brathwaite’s side and Bangladesh in Chattogram; my instincts tell me that. And that, along with so many of us, you steupsed loudly after Day Three when West …

In all my years of observing and commenting on West Indies cricket, I have tended to agree rather than disagree with public positions espoused by Dr Noel Kalicharan. Or Ricky Skerritt. But I guess there’s a first time for everything. That’s progress!  Progress comes in various forms. For more than …

For 32 years since Viv Richards’ West Indies beat Australia by nine wickets at the Gabba, no other country successfully breached that fortress.  Of the 31 matches played there between that defeat and this year, the home side had drawn seven and won 24. But without its appointed captain and …

In today’s Third ODI, West Indies won the toss, the only outcome that was not seemingly pre-ordained. They opted not to bat first; cynics who watched all three games might be tempted to omit the last word.  When they did eventually take their turn at the crease in Chattogram, halfway …

It’s enough to wipe the smile off your face. Or make you disrespect anyone else who is within earshot. On the radio on Friday morning, the announcer broke the news this way: “As expected, Bangladesh defeated the West Indies by seven wickets in the second ODI earlier today.” That she …

“Shakespeare, yuh go dead before mih.” If, as children, we happened to say the same words at the same time, my sisters and I used to blurt out those six words. And we used to hear Billy Graham on the radio on Sunday mornings. All four of those sisters eventually …

It wasn’t, we knew then, the best of times; it wasn’t, we now know, the worst of times.  When, in July 1990, Yasin Abu Bakr opened a door and, in David Rudder’s well-weighted words, showed us our other side, like Adam and Eve, we went frantically in search of a …

Under normal circumstances, you’d struggle to be well represented if 12 of your top players suddenly announced that they were unavailable for an imminent tour. But with the world in the throes of a global pandemic for the last year, January/February 2021 is anything but normal. So, unsurprisingly, Sir Clive …

Five overs. For an ODI captain, those 30 balls are sometimes a real test. Think West Indies Test captain Jason Holder bidding just to keep the ball in the park when AB De Villiers took a liking to his bowling in the ICC World Cup in Sydney in 2015. Five …

As the West Indies second-string cricketers prepare to fly out to Bangladesh for a three-ODI, two-Test tour, expectation levels are way, way down. Unsurprisingly, not too many people seem terribly optimistic about the account this depleted bunch will give of itself.  And it’s not just the man-in-the-street who’s making little …