(Part 19.) Off-spinning stylist. In the year of the World Cup, Lance Gibbs stood on the verge of history. Although approaching his 41st birthday, the lanky off-spinner with the classic high arm action was just 15 victims away from eclipsing former England fast bowler Fred Trueman’s tally of 307 to …
Read More »1975 CWC: Clive Lloyd was the man for the big occasion
(Part nine.) Leader supreme. Clive Lloyd is automatically associated with the West Indies’ unprecedented period of dominance of world cricket: the era of invincibility in Test series from 1980 to 1995, via the fearsome foursomes and an array of world-class batsmen, including himself. However, the big Guyanese left-hander had already …
Read More »1975 CWC: Windies make ODI debut at Leeds, as team transitions from Sobers era
(Part six.) A new era. Despite being partly driven by commercial concerns, cricket in the early 1970s was nothing like the environment 30 years later. The arrival of the T20 format and subsequently T20 Internationals triggered the franchise boom and, therefore, fixture congestion which remains one of the biggest challenges …
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 »Trapped between ICC and deep blue sea; Lloyd lives to see Rudder’s harder tomorrows
“…a divided world that don’t need islands no more…” Can it be that Sir Clive Lloyd does not know fellow OCC awardee David Rudder’s pithy line from his 1988 Rally? Or is it that he simply wishes to ignore it? Or is the problem that Rudder’s 1996 Legacy prediction has …
Read More »B&B Ep 22: Michael Holding: West Indies cricket icon, ‘Whispering Death’, unplugged
Legendary West Indies fast bowler Michael Holding, nicknamed ‘Whispering Death’, talks to the Burdie and Barney Show about his rise as an elite cricketer and then commentator, epic battles on the pitch and good times off it, decolonisation and how to rescue and revive regional cricket. Subscribe for free to …
Read More »Best: A selection reflection; if Haynes’ knowledge is ‘second to none’, why does he need a partner?
Recently retired former West Indies ODI captain Dwayne Bravo is not happy with the way CWI does business. “From top level, he explained to SportsMax in a post-World Cup interview, “the politics is so strong. It doesn’t matter who is the president or who is the CEO, they have the …
Read More »Clive Lloyd receives knighthood from Duke of Cambridge; now 13th West Indian honoured for cricket
Arise, Sir Clive Lloyd. Legendary former West Indies cricketer Clive Lloyd, one of the game’s most successful captains of all time, today received a knighthood from the Duke of Cambridge for “services to the game of cricket”. Lloyd was due to receive his award last year, only for the ceremony …
Read More »T2021 W/C: Lara’s peculiar choice: is Prince of PoS putting Gayle part before WI whole?
I do NOT know if Mark Nicholas is the racist I believe him to be. It matters not to me today. I do NOT know if Quinton de Kock is the racist I do NOT believe him to be. It matters not to me today. Neither man’s issue matters to …
Read More »T2021 W/C: Are Pollard’s men finally ready to change the tune, after ‘collapso’ mess?
At 25 for 1 in the fourth over of England’s pursuit of 55 in the West Indies’ opening match of the 2021 T20 World Cup campaign, Win Predictor gave Kieron Pollard’s side a 1% chance of victory. On commentary on television at the time, former England captain Michael Atherton questioned …
Read More »Under pressure: Best looks at Viv’s measured approach to Gayle’s ‘Ambi’ swipe
A guilty conscience, those who grew up in Trinidad in the second half of the 20th century would often have heard, needs no accuser. Christopher Henry ‘Scrempy’ Gayle grew up in Kingston, Jamaica in the second half of the second half of the last century. But he probably heard it …
Read More »T2021 W/C: A reflection on selection, concussion and Romario’s extraordinary exhibition
For a selector, concussion is an occupational hazard. All the more, as Ken ‘Jaiks’ Jaikaransingh has already noted above, if you are a West Indian selector. Let me remind you of a truth every Trini sports fan knows: in T&T for certain, probably in the West Indies as a whole, …
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