Tag Archives: Earl Best

I’ve been going through files from the West Indies Cricket Board of Control from the 1950s. I was fortunate to get access to these rare documents which go back 75 years, and I am revisiting them because I feel a sense of responsibility to put the information surrounding the career …

If David Rudder had had his way, there would be no scary future awaiting West Indies Test cricket. “Pretty soon the runs are gonna flow again like water,” he  declared, “bringing so much joy to each and every son and daughter.” Easy as it is to get the wrong impression, …

Cricket connoisseurs had little doubt. If, in the last 15 years,  anybody was going to break Brian Lara’s 400 not out highest individual innings record, the hero would be one of five players. Who are the Fab Five? The first two are Australia’s Steve Smith and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson, …

Boasting the most feared and most formidable bowling foursome in contemporary world cricket, Australia need no assistance to best Roston Chase’s now-struggling-to-find-their-feet West Indies. In the first match of the three-Test series, they won by 159 runs in Barbados last week, and they seemed to get it anyway. From an …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …