Out of the woodwork they have come in their numbers, rushing to the defence of poor Shannon Gabriel whose unsurprising eleventh hour Sunday evening brain fart handed Pakistan the Third and final Test in Dominica two weekends ago. But what know they of Caribbean cricket, to misquote CLR James, who do …
Read More »PITT STOP: ODI numbers don’t lie; WICB must stop running its own cricket team out!
“The supply of cricketers is not nearly as great here in the West Indies as in Pakistan, say, with its almost 195 million or India (1.2 billion) or even England (55 million). “Inexplicably, however, we have found a way to reduce the supply of players available for international cricket by …
Read More »PITT STOP: The long and short of it all; West Indies’ T20 cricketers deserve a fair shake
The West Indies is the region which is the chief victim of old-fashioned thinking about the game of cricket. It has always baffled me why in the 21st Century influential cricket people in the region have been unable to recognize how invidious distinctions between the long and shorter versions have been …
Read More »PITT STOP: WICB think long, then play wrong; Romain Pitt passes sentence
The good news is that Jimmy Adams, the new director of West Indies cricket, says he believes the eligibility rules governing selection should be changed. The bad news is that he also believes that the change may take some time because it will involve a “process”—somewhat like the “process” that …
Read More »PITT STOP: Politics aside, something else is holding WI back from cricket success
Can anyone explain why the West Indies are playing Pakistan at virtually the same time the Indian Premier League games are being played? One can understand why Pakistan, whose players do not play in the IPL, would be willing to be involved but what is the rationale for the involvement of …
Read More »PITT STOP: Former judge rules on West Indies cricket case of Bravo vs Cameron
It cannot be in the best interests of West Indies cricket to persist in the exclusion of Darren Bravo. The younger Bravo has again been excluded from the West Indian ODI team. There is no reason to doubt that his exclusion is a result of the tweet he made on learning of his demotion, …
Read More »Who will lead WI away from the abyss? Vidale urges fans to rally for the team we deserve
“It is bad captaincy that is causing us to be scrambled, everybody is whispering and shrugging shoulders. ... In this campaign I shall spare nobody… I hereby give notice; I shall not let this question rest until it is corrected… This fooling with the West Indies captaincy has gone on too …
Read More »Darren and the IPL: Best examines links between Bravo, Pooran, Lara… and the media
It brought Garry Sobers to the verge of public tears in Sri Lanka in 2015. Wherever Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh and Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards are in the world, it is almost certain to bring them to private tears. And it will make cricketing knights Frank Worrell and …
Read More »Letter to the Editor: Why it is hard to care about West Indies cricket
“How has it come to this? A woeful revolving merry-go-around of mediocrity, where an average coach gets to ‘rehabilitate’ a struggling team… “No offence to Stuart Law—the third Aussie to try his hand at the role of head coach—but questionably short stints coaching Sri Lanka and Bangladesh don’t qualify you …
Read More »The CPL and the West Indies Resurgence: What Franchises Can Do for Us
The 2016 CPL T20 started at the end of June and no doubt, no matter who wins, the tournament will be heralded as a success. The recent success of the West Indies in the shorter format of the game has contributed in no small way to the tournament’s growth and …
Read More »… And the media keep right on media-ing: How to bring the WICB to heel
Columnist Earl Best calls on the regional media to sign a hands-off, ‘non-corporation’ pact to bring WICB president Dave Cameron and company to heel: What know they of cricket, CLR James asked almost five and a half decades ago, who only cricket know? What know they of West Indies cricket, …
Read More »The little boy that CLR James forgot: tribute to late cricket scribe Tony Cozier
Columnist Earl Best surveys the many tributes to dearly departed cricket icon Tony Cozier and seeks to make a river of the tributaries: “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” (African proverb quoted by Chinua Achebe) In a 21st Century colonised by the …
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