Tag Archives: West Indies cricket

Did you see Monday evening’s World Cup programme or last week’s promo for it? The one in which ex-WI captain Darren Sammy matter-of-factly asserts that ‘West Indies are winning the World Cup’? I mean, really matter-of-factly. As if he were saying ‘The sun rises in the east.’ Promo and programme …

Brian Lara on song, cricket connoisseurs the world over agree, is an arresting, cathartic spectacle; it belongs, in the words of CLR James, who does not only cricket know, ‘with the theatre, ballet, opera and dance.’ A Brian Lara pull, right knee lifted high and torso swivelling rapidly but gracefully …

Columnist Earl Best concludes his series on legendary West Indies and Trinidad and Tobago batsman Brian Lara with an imagined interview with the Prince of Port-of-Spain: Earl Best (EB): Shane Warne calls some of Sachin Tendulkar innings “pretty amazing” and calls some of yours “unbelievable.”  “I think if you wanted …

“A man hit a ball in Antigua,” we all remember Superblue singing in 1995, “and it end up in Trinidad on the Promenade, Lara Promenade.” “The ball cross over rivers and seas,” he adds, “in the sky of the West Indies; the ball whistling through the trees like a joyful …

Edgbaston, 501, June 1994: ‘Rambo’ Brian batters Durham “Cricket is a visual art,” CLR James assures us in Beyond a Boundary. “(…) [F]irst and foremost a dramatic spectacle, [i]t belongs with the theatre, ballet, opera and dance.” Extrapolating, one can see a major Brian Lara innings as akin to a …

Antigua, 375, April 1994 & 400, April 2004: Scaling Everest… because it is there “Awesome.” For Geoffrey Boycott, the former England opener, a single word suffices. “Amazing,” Ian Botham concurs. “One helluva innings.” “[I]ncredible physical stamina,” gushes David “Bumble” Lloyd, “a beautiful technical innings. Memorable. Magnificent.” It is April 2004, …

“In all,” observes Jon Hotten in The Meaning of Cricket, “he faced 19, 753 balls in Test cricket and another 13,086 in one-day internationals before he retired in 2007. Only 483 of those resulted in his dismissal, so 32,356 did not. “Put differently, just 1.47 per cent of the deliveries …

“A man of genius,” CLR James says, in writing of Garry Sobers, “is what he is, he cannot be something else and remain what he is.” There is another West Indian left-hander, born a generation after Sobers on May 2, 1969, to whom James’ encomium applies unadjusted. Superlatives abound in …

“You may not think there is anything wrong with all of that,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff repeatedly told the Republican members of his committee earlier this week, “but I do.” “All of that” is a longish, itemised list of some of the most egregious actions—not to say ‘crimes’—already …

“We have already delivered the impossible. For miracles, feel free to check back later.” Were I in the shoes of new CWI President Ricky Skerritt, that is what I would have tweeted on Monday afternoon for the benefit of the West Indies fans, new, old and returning. I confidently affirm, …

Cricket West Indies President Whycliffe Dave Cameron is not a dictator. He would arguably like to be a dictator and probably even sees himself as a dictator. But, according to former West Indies team manager Ricky Skerritt, Cameron is NOT a dictator. That is what the CWI presidential hopeful told …

“Albert Einstein highlighted the importance of those two factors in human performance when he said: ‘The world that we have created as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level as they were created’. “[…] Taking these …