Take a bow, Romario Shepherd. At a time when the Caribbean front-runners aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory, the Guyanese allrounder has given the CWI contingent a boost. In case you missed it, Rajit Patidar’s Royal Challengers Bengaluru beat MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings by two runs on Saturday. Without …
Read More »Best: The day six-hitting saved Windies white-ball Women—and then doomed them
Nobody can blame Hayley Matthews or Chinelle Henry for what happened at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on Saturday. Or Afy Fletcher or Aaliyah Alleyne. In their must-win final qualifier of the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025, West Indies Women came up trumps to secure a rapid 6-wicket victory. But …
Read More »Six-hitting Pooran likened to Universe Boss; will CWI take chain-up?
Former West Indies T20 captain Nicholas Pooran has been in sublime form in recent times. But is there enough in it to justify comparisons to the ‘Universe Boss’, Chris Gayle? There is at least one writer who seems to think so. Against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens in Kolkata …
Read More »Best: Miles off the mark? Does T&T need Bascombe’s talent spotter when we have QPCC?
When the Champions Trophy tournament begins in Pakistan today, West Indies will not be among the eight competing teams. But Cricket West Indies’ director of cricket Miles Bascombe has had precious little to say on that score. With little fanfare, the former West Indies captain Daren Sammy has risen to …
Read More »Best: Will West Indies cricket sink or swim with Shallow?
Ralph Gonsalves, an unconditional West Indies cricket supporter, has an important message for Cricket West Indies (CWI) president Dr Kishore Shallow. The Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister is unhappy with the way regional cricket is being managed. According to him, “the same bureaucratic, lifeless kind of administration” is …
Read More »Best: In Alzarri’s defence—WI pacer needs better captaincy, not anger management
Light! At last! As I watched an enthusiastic Alzarri Joseph (AJ) throw down short ball after short ball at Bangladesh’s Taskin Ahmed towards the end of Sunday’s post-tea session in the First Test in Antigua, that hard-to-stomach letter to the Wired868 editor came back to me. “I think this has …
Read More »Best: Close first-person encounters; when real calypsonians tell their own stories…
Shorty would be able to blame any negative feedback from Severe Licking on Baron. Or his informants, Bomber and Cypher. Gypsy’s troubles, however, are of his own making—in more than one sense! In his 1972 For Cane, the Little Black Boy singer complained that Ah really doh know how to …
Read More »Best: Insider women’s calypso stories and a sweet soca tale of a licking
Calypso has given us a handful of unforgettable female figures. There is, for example, Kitchener’s Flag Woman and Scrunter’s Woman on the Base, there is David Rudder’s Bahia Girl and Sparrow’s Winer Girl from Princes Town. Not one of those four has a name. But the women I want to …
Read More »Race and kaiso in the classroom: Kitchener’s ditty on little Black boys
Only a complete ignoramus! Or the kind of blindness that will not see! Tell me, how could even one person in Trinidad and Tobago actually entertain the thought that Aldwyn “Kitchener” Roberts might have been capable of such an abomination? Oh, what a country! In the days when Guy Harewood …
Read More »From Sparrow to Cro Cro to Machel: Best chronicles calypso controversies through the years
Emceeing the Revue Calypso Tent’s show in 1972, night after night, the Mighty Stalin introduced Kelvin Pope in the same way: “So, ladies and gentlemen, here without further ado is that four-king four-cup four car Duke.” Famously, of course, over the four years immediately preceding ’72, the Mighty Duke had …
Read More »RBCPL24: Are WI being served? Wired868 looks back at CPL24
“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 …
Read More »RBCPL24: Feeling the fielding—how David Wiese leads Kings’ bowlers’ support staff
A cricket match, a cricket sage once wrote, is played in the minds of the opposing captains. Were he writing in the post-20th century T20 world and thus disposed to making the compulsory compromises imposed by today’s audience of e-literates, he might not have stopped there. But, I imagine him …
Read More »