“Yuh tink is so de ting does work?”
Calypso History Month has just begun and the 2024 Republic Bank Caribbean Premier League (CPL), the biggest party in sport, has just ended. How are they connected? Well, if you know where to look, you can find several through-lines.
There’s no Lying Excuses by Sparrow, which the conspiracy theorists would like to see on the list—alas, as far as I am concerned, their arguments about motives leave everyone completely in the dark.
But there is Sparrow’s We like it so and Education. And there’s Stalin’s Black Man come out to Party and Caribbean Man. There’s also Gypsy’s Little Black Boy and Singing Sandra’s Voices from the Ghetto and Explainer’s Heroes.
Finally, there’s Shadow’s Poverty is Hell and Yuh lookin’ fuh Horn.
For starters, we have chosen to sharpen the focus on this last connection.
Shadow’s question is directed rhetorically at a “young fellah” who is hoping to make it in life without having done the essential groundwork.
Wired868 opted to redirect the question to a 35-year-old fellow who, according to West Indies white ball and Saint Lucia Kings coach Daren Sammy, has worked hard to reinvent himself.
Johnson Charles was not named Player-of-the-Tournament. That honour went, understandably to his teammate Noor Ahmad, whose 22 wickets tally was only once bettered when Dwayne Bravo finished with 28 in 2015.
But, says Sammy: “Charles has been a revelation for us. […] To realize at that age how can I improve on my game and how can I be more of an asset to my team.
“[…] Just watching him putting in the work in the nets and [having] the confidence to go out and execute it in the game, it’s a great example to my young players in the team.”
“I am really thankful that he has not said he’s been coming to the latter stages [of his career] and […] finding ways to reinvent himself.
“That is a plus not only for the Kings but on the international front as well.”
The SLK opener managed only seven in last Sunday evening’s final against defending champions Guyana Amazon Warriors, which the Kings won by six wickets.
But his 89 off 40 balls against Trinbago Knight Riders was one of the standout innings of the 2024 CPL. And his season’s tally of 452 runs was surpassed only by TKR’s Nicholas Pooran (504) and Barbados Royal’s Quinton De Kock (453).
When the West Indies announced their white ball squads for the 3-ODI, 3-T20 tour of Sri Lanka starting next week, only one of the 18 Emerging Players listed to appear in the tournament had been deemed worthy of one of the 28 available places.
Almost-18-year-old Jewel Andrew managed to score a half-century in his first knock in the just completed tournament and then reached 48 in his third innings. He is included in the 14-member ODI squad.
Of the others, two caught the eye with the ball: TKR’s Nathan Edward getting 3/19 against GAW and BR’s Ramon Simmonds claiming two big scalps in GAW’s stand-in captain Shai Hope and TKR skipper Kieron Pollard.
With the bat, TKR’s Shaqkere Parris (179 runs off 165 balls, including 57 off 33b vs SLK) occasionally looked good on the attack. But he soaked up too many dot balls, clearly unable to keep the score ticking on by deliberate use of the gaps in the field to secure singles when boundaries were not on offer.
“Yuh workin’? Yuh jokin’? Yuh crazy? Yuh lazy?”
These questions might have come from a curious—and caring—Charles. But they must come from Sammy, eager to show how Charles’ example is “a plus […] on the international front as well”.
And he cannot take no for an answer. Not at any rate to the first question and not from any of SLK’s Ackeem Auguste, Saint Kitts and Nevis Patriots’ Johann Layne, Antigua and Barbuda Falcons’ Kelvin Pitman, GAW’s Kevlon Anderson and the aforementioned Edward, Parris and Simmonds.
And as I write the news breaks that Auguste, Edward, Layne and Pitman have been contracted for the 2024/25 session of the Men’s Academy. Also included are Joshua Bishop, Teddy Bishop, McKenny Clarke and Rivaldo Clarke, four more who have been on the Emerging Player lists.
“The programme offers,” says the release, “a comprehensive curriculum that includes on-field skill enhancement as well as off-field elements like personal development, leadership training and media engagement.”
For me, two CPL-related questions immediately arise. The first is whether the franchises are in any way contributing to the discussion about who gets selected for the Academy contracts. Eight of the 15 are known to CPL followers and none of them is a wrist-spinner.
Yet, whereas four of the top six and six of the top ten highest scorers in CPL24 were West Indians, only three bowlers made it into the top ten—and none of them is a wrist-spinner!
Would the Kings have been able to go all the way without Ahmad’s wiles and wicket-taking skills?
Secondly, it’s hard to not notice that leadership training is listed as an “off-field element”. Which observer with a genuine interest in the future of West Indies cricket could fail to notice that the two teams at the top of the 2024 pile were captained by imported professionals?
As Ian Bishop has made it a point of duty to ask repeatedly, with all three of the West Indian captains in CPL24 on the wrong side of 30, where are their replacements?
Other important questions arise such as whose best interests are being served by the CPL. We can ask, for instance, about the advisability of a lengthy half-time show during the final.
Should we not promote the cricket above the entertainment? Is giving the sponsors their pound of flesh more important than ensuring that the cricket match is completed?
Already, with a 7pm start, we are catering more to a foreign audience than the passionate, paying fans who almost ritually, dutifully filled the stands in Basseterre and Gros Islet, in Kensington and St John’s and in Tarouba and Providence.
Maybe in response to a probing question, we’ll hear that one hand cyar clap. Just as there is no longer a Jamaica Tallawahs, we might hear, if there were no 7pm start, there would be no Antigua and Barbuda Falcons.
Or we might hear, not from Sparrow but from the horses’ mouths, that we like it so.
No complaint, though, (cue Explainer) about the way we treat our heroes. On the occasion of his final appearance for the franchise at the Queen’s Park Oval, Dwayne “Champion” Bravo was appropriately hailed and celebrated as the major contributor to West Indies cricket he is.
And then, ex-post facto, aptly wined and dined—and hired as a mentor!—by the franchise he helped to make so successful.
Those in the know will hear the line in Sparrow’s 1960s ‘Education’ that says “Children go to school and learn well / otherwise later on in life yuh go ketch real hell” and appreciate how times have changed.
So, success, yes. For Bravo and for the CPL organisers. But there doubtless remains work to be done, particularly by the teams that missed out this season.
Throughout the long biggest-party-in-sport season long, TKR’s Pollard has made a song and dance about the use of the Emerging Players. No surprise there.
Bravo, soon-to-be-41, has long been an eminence grise, now he is emeritus. The 36-year-old Andre Russell’s physical fitness struggles are evident.
Sunil Narine, 36, missed several games on account of injury. Despite his impressive 4-fer against the Kings and his 235-run aggregate, Pollard’s 37 years are beginning to show.
If no replacements emerge for the standouts, where will TKR’s next title come from?
One does not need to be a history buff to see that Andre Fletcher’s nearly winless Patriots need to be more like the Haitian patriots who—with British, not South African, support—whipped Napoleon’s troops at the start of the 19th Century.
Or an expert in ornithology to see that Chris Green’s Falcons need to be more like the avian in Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Eerily, almost as if he were referencing the Eliminator incident, Richard Bach mentions the side coached by Curtly Ambrose and Shivnarine Chanderpaul by name:
“Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in the dark, you’d […] have a falcon’s short wings!”
The Royals got off the ground early. But they struggled once de Kock’s runs dried up. The lesson for them is about not putting all your eggs in one basket. Or even in two.
Theekshana, whose 17 wickets at an average of 17.52 saw him finish second-best to Noor Ahmad, delivered day after day. David Miller slammed a brutal 50 off 17 balls to get his side over the line in the Eliminator.
On the other occasions when it mattered, he simply didn’t deliver.
The season as a whole, however, did deliver. Beginning with two last-ball wins, it provided good exciting cricket throughout and ended with a stunning eleventh-hour game-changing onslaught on the home team’s until then frugal battery of bowlers.
And at the end of it, each of the teams that comprise the CPL sextet is at last, after 11 years, the proud owner of at least one title.
Now, even the Kings can truthfully claim, with Mical Teja, that winning is “in we DNA”. Which, at least in part, is due to Johnson Charles’ hopefully contagious self-belief and his refusal to accept that, to misquote Shadow, “Some bowler will own yuh”.
CPL 2024 Final Honours Board
Champion Team: Saint Lucia Kings
Player-of-the-Tournament: Noor Ahmad (SLK)
Player-of-the-Match: Roston Chase (SLK)
Emerging Player-of-the-Year: Jewel Andrew (ABF)
Most Runs: Nicholas Pooran (TKR) – 504 runs
Most Wickets: Noor Ahmad (SLK) – 22
Highest Individual Score in Tournament: Quinton de Kock (BR) – 115
Highest Individual Score in Final: Aaron Jones (SLK) – 48*
Best Bowling Figures in Tournament: Rakheem Cornwall (BR) – 5/16
Best Bowling Figures in Final: Noor Ahmad (SLK) – 3/19
Highest partnership in Final: Aaron Jones and Roston Chase –88 runs
Most titles in CPL: TKR – 5 wins
Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.