Strike Squad coach Everald “Gally” Cummings talks to Earl Best in the first of a two-part interview about the Road to Italy and an explosive fall-out with TTFA general secretary Jack Warner PART I: “The sun,” Michael Maurice said about his failure to stop Paul Caligiuri’s long-range left-footed shot on …
Read More »Can Bangladesh push West Indies in two-Test series?
Earl Best comments on what the fans can expect in the two weeks ahead: To the extent that performances in the three ODIs are a reliable guide to what to expect in the two-Test series which starts tomorrow, Mushfiqur Rahim’s touring Bangladeshis are deep in trouble. Obviously, statistics do not …
Read More »Independents shame Senate in controversial bill debate
Columnist Earl Best watched the end of the Constitution Amendment Bill debate in the Senate on television and was not amused: The government of the day—and of the night, Section 34 has taught us—is sleeping the sleep of the just; confident that a substantial part of the battle for post-election …
Read More »Pollard, Smith abandon Barbados Tridents for IPL teams
The Barbados Tridents, who last weekend won US$250,000 for beating the Guyana Amazons to clinch the Limacol Caribbean Premier League 2014 title, will soon be US$300,000 richer. Or will they? Whatever the answer, one suspects that team management would somehow be happier without the money and with their two major …
Read More »Polly puts the CPL mantle on as WI welcomes Bangladesh
Earl Best looks back at the 2014 Limacol CPL and forward to Bangladesh’s Caribbean tour: Congratulations are in order for Keiron Pollard and his victorious Barbados Tridents. The heavens had to intervene to hand them the 2014 Caribbean Premier League title but it wasn’t quite the miracle I had said …
Read More »Is Lloyd’s appointment a step forward or back for West Indies?
Columnist Earl Best takes an irreverent, even iconoclastic look at the credentials of the new WICB’s selection panel convenor: Clive Lloyd is a tactical genius. Reference the second World Cup of Cricket, staged in England in 1979. Playing against the hosts in the final, Lloyd’s West Indies had posted a …
Read More »Gally talks on 2014 World Cup, Warner and bonus-gate
“Ask me not,” Everald “Gally” Cummings says, “what he did for the game but what the game did for him.” The former Strike Squad coach is responding to a question about disgraced former FIFA vice-president, Austin Jack Warner. Inviting the normally outspoken national player to be “brutally honest,” we had …
Read More »Will CPL form propel West Indies to batter Bangladesh?
Earl Best examines current CPL form and looks at the implications for the West Indies’ imminent home series: It’s hard to say today just which team will emerge victorious in the 2014 Limacol Caribbean Premier League. Any one of the top three can still do it. Despite one or two …
Read More »Ramdin’s ready for full West Indies responsibility
Earl Best watches the Limacol CPL and draws conclusions about the West Indian captaincy: I am obsessed with the idea of Denesh “Shotta” Ramdin as West Indies captain. No. Go back and read that again. Not West Indies Test captain but West Indies captain. Period. This ailment is so serious …
Read More »Reviewing the 1990 Coup: Is Abu Bakr’s number up?
Columnist Earl Best refuses to shoulder arms as he revisits one of the most controversial periods in Trinidad and Tobago’s history History is replete—littered is more appropriate since the dung heap of history is where we find them—with characters who make no distinction between fame and notoriety. Adolf Hitler, Jack …
Read More »When The Political Tongue Slips
Earl Best recalls some occasions when the public language was not, ahm, parliamentary… Three years ago, Benjai’s monster hit “Trini” mash up the whole place. “And they like to hear Trini talk, talk, talk, talk, talk…,” he told us. There wasn’t one dissenting voice. That “they” includes me because, in …
Read More »Is The Kiwi Defeat a Half-Step Backwards For Ramdin?
Earl Best discusses the new skipper’s support after the five-match New Zealand series And so, it is over. I refer, of course, both to the New Zealand versus the West Indies series which sought in vain to divert our attention from Brazil and to the 2014 World Cup that was …
Read More »