It is looking as if Kieron Pollard’s Trinbago Knight Riders will give the nation a belated but welcome Independence gift. As 2020 CPL action shifts back to the Brian Lara Academy in Tarouba tomorrow, TKR are firmly in the driver’s seat. For those fans with short memories, that is precisely …
Read More »Media Monitor: Kamla’s choice, Anil’s voice and putting party before country
It’s an ill wind, we have long heard, that blows nobody good. Ditto, I think, Anil Roberts. Which may be why Kamla Persad-Bissessar has seen it fit to return him to the national parliament as a senator. If every current UNC Member of Parliament were somehow able to make a …
Read More »Media Monitor: UNC’s arresting image and Maraj’s masterclass on Kamla’s figures of speech
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, we have heard a million times, bamboozle them with bullshit. Ralph Maraj is the exemplar par excellence of that message. On the post-4pm news segment of the i95.5FM afternoon show early last week, Maraj leapt to the defence of UNC Political Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar. …
Read More »Best: Will resentment ruin redemption time for Holder’s men against ‘relentless’ England?
‘Resentful,’ yes. Try as I might, however, nowhere in the dictionary could I find ‘relentfull’ or ‘relentful.’ But if I were West Indies coach Phillip Simmons, I would have minted one or the other word to use in my post-match comments on the third day of the decisive Third Test …
Read More »Asterisks and parentheses; why we shouldn’t write off WI’s Wisden chances
That cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties is, though never irrelevant, a very tired cliché. That Test cricket is the most severe examination a player can get, though not clichéd, is not exactly new. West Indies did learn a new cricketing truth today, however. It is that, even when …
Read More »Best: Will West Indies keel over and die? Holder to the rescue against Root’s rampant England
Conventional wisdom holds that Stuart Broad’s Sunday evening new ball spell killed off the West Indies chances in the Second Test at Old Trafford. The truth, however, is that, had Jason Holder been at the top of his game on Monday morning, he might have found a pulse where the …
Read More »Best: Holder’s West Indies to win the Wisden Trophy? You bet!
I am willing to wager more than a few quid on a West Indies victory. Only a handful of England’s actors (skipper Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes and Stuart Broad) remain on the 2020 set. But Jason Holder has no fewer than seven of his 2017 West Indians, including …
Read More »Best for the defence; why PM Rowley was right and where President Wallace went wrong
“All ah we tief!” Late PNM minister Desmond Cartey is no friend of mine. I have had no direct contact with him. I know precious little about him. Do not, therefore, expect me to attempt to explain what might have driven him to make his confession. And in so doing …
Read More »Best: Easy like Sunday morning; relaxed Rowley comes to terms with Trini reality
In jeans and tee-shirt. With push-toe rubber or leather slippers on his feet. That, I imagined, was how Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, interviewed by Natalee Ligoure before fielding questions from the public on i95.5fm on Sunday, was dressed. In my mind’s eye, I saw the Mason Hall native walking …
Read More »Terrible Thursday? Queen Terri tells old-stagers to share tricks of calypso trade
Calypso needs to get its act together! Minister Nyan Gadsby-Dolly did not think very much of TUCO’s handling of calypso in 2020 and she pulled no punches in letting the world know. Her unflattering comments on TV6 revealed disapproval of the decision to keep Kaisorama and the art form’s Carnival …
Read More »What’s in a name—Pt 2: Black Power, Calypso, Soca and pumpkin vine
What, a young British schoolboy was asked somewhere in the early 1980s, is Black Power? His response was a name: ‘Clive Lloyd.’ As the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago emerges from Carnival and begins a largely muted celebration of the anniversary of the epoch-making 1970 Black Power Revolution, some other …
Read More »Best: What’s in a name? Calypso’s losing battle with the new identity normal
When Terri Lyons led Karene Asche and Heather Mac Intosh in a clean sweep for women in the National Calypso Monarch competition on Carnival Thursday, it may have reminded many of Denyse Plummer’s 1988 boast that woman is boss. However, for those willing to go back two more years to …
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