Is greatness, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder? The question is broached in a not-very-good Calypso History Month piece penned by Debbie Jacob in a recent Newsday article under the headline: ‘My top ten calypsoes’. Alas, she offers no answer. “When it comes to narrowing down all the …

Budget Day. As usual, many citizens are waiting to hear what goodies are coming their way this year. Most are focused on Finance Minister Colm Imbert. What, they are asking, will the Finance Minister deliver today? But some others, not so much. What ball, we untypical Trini cricket fans are …

Booty, you have probably heard, is in the eye of the beholder. Ask Jack Warner. Haitian officials complained that the lion’s share of US$750m—sent to Warner-controlled accounts by Fifa and a presidential candidate for the world governing body—never made it to the impoverished island, who were desperate for relief after …

Trinidad Express Newspapers are in the market for an assistant night editor. Through you, I wish to make an application for the job. On the list of qualifications and experience required for securing employment in this position are nine items: At #7, ‘Proficient knowledge of the structure and content of …

Mid-April, the 53rd anniversary of the declaration by Dr Eric Williams’ embattled government of T&T’s first state of emergency, and two voices are in my head. One is real, the other imagined. Neither will go away. “Power alone will never make us strong. The heart must also sing the human …

Calypsonians are as cantankerous as they come. So when Relator suggests that Sir Garfield Sobers was no great shakes as a captain, we have to take that with a pinch of salt.  Yet it is there, on the record, in his 1972 hit “Gavaskar”. So we have to deal with …

Twenty-six centuries and 30 half-centuries.  That, according to the official record, is what the legendary left-handed batsman Garfield St Aubrun Sobers has produced for West Indies. But in Sobers’ mind, his record of achievement with the bat is seven 100s and nine 50s, less than half of what the record …

“Did I entertain?” Garry St Aubrun Sobers never asked his fans that question. The answer would indisputably have been an emphatic, unanimous, unqualified yes. Those three words actually came out of the mouth of Brian Charles Lara at the end of a stellar 18-year career.  Sobers, a West Indian sporting …

Born 86 years ago today on 28 July 1936, Garfield St Aubrun Sobers became simply, as Sparrow sang, “the greatest cricketer on Earth or Mars”. Hyperbole? Calypsonians, we know, are so prone. Still, it isn’t easy to dismiss the claim made by the Calypso King of the World on behalf …

In Game Two of the three-match ODI series against the Netherlands at the VRA Ground in Amstelveen today, Brandon King kept his head while other West Indian batsmen around him were losing theirs. The talented right-hander reaped multiple rewards: an unbeaten 91 to go with his 58 not out in …

One brilliant one-handed catch from former captain Jason Holder. Some 60-odd deliveries with the ball, eight of them from lead pacer Kemar Roach that yielded two wickets. Just about 30 deliveries with the bat, 21 of them yielding 20 runs for skipper Kraigg Brathwaite. That was all the West Indies …

At the Masters in Georgia, they call Saturday ‘moving day’. At the National Stadium in Grenada today, a masterly maiden Test century by wicketkeeper/batsman Joshua Da Silva first moved Kraigg Brathwaite’s West Indies into the saddle of the Third Apex Test. Then, with the first innings lead 93, allrounder Kyle …