Tag Archives: Earl Best

The time to be in front, every athlete knows, is at the end. And if, come Sunday evening, Trinbago Knight Riders are not at the front of the race for the 2018 CPL title, their fans will probably feel justified in pointing fingers at their skipper, Dwayne Bravo. “Bravo the …

One day fuh police, the old people tell us, and one day fuh tief. With Trinbago Knight Riders now carded to take on—for the third time in the space of a week—the Guyana Amazon Warriors in tomorrow’s first qualifier in Providence, what I think interests the fans is whose way …

Asked to name his best-ever West Indies squad, Lloyd Best named as his very first selectee the dean of West Indian cricket writers, Tony Cozier. This was in the late 1990s; we did not yet know that, like the Israelites in the Old Testament, we West Indians would be condemned …

Steve Smith had not bowled in a competitive match for at least two years before Barbados Tridents’ captain Jason Holder called him up to bowl in the August 22 game against the Jamaica Tallawahs. Smith claimed two crucial wickets, conceded a mere 19 runs in his three overs and thus …

If you watched the TV6 7pm News on Thursday, then you should have a clear idea of how deep in the doodoo our media are. And since One Caribbean Media (OCM) is one of the five companies on whose entire or partial assets the National Investment Fund is “collateralised”—not my …

The Trinidad Express probably thinks that the World Cup craze is so all-pervasive that they don’t need to bother too much about the rest of the paper. Here is a sentence from last Friday’s Editorial, headlined “Facts the antidote to fake news:” “Evidently hot under the collar, he—the reference was …

Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, there was a Family Planning Association (FPA) bumper sticker which reminded the world that “The challenge is not in becoming a father but in being one.” After all, all it takes to have a child is a little rudeness, a little luck, (good or …

The voice on the other end of the line was female but it was neither family nor familiar. And without so much as a perfunctory greeting, she got right to the heart of the matter. “Mr Best, yuh eh have no mudder?” “I beg your pardon?” I said, taken aback. …

My first encounter with Sisyphos came in Sixth Form Latin class at QRC when I was in my mid-teens. And a decade or so later, I was halfway between 18 and 28 in 20th Century French Literature class at UWI when I was introduced to the Camusian version of the …

“Power alone,” the poet Syl Lowhar wrote in Tapia’s “Black Power in Human Song” special somewhere in the 1970’s, “will never make us strong. The heart must also sing the human song.” Almost half a century after Geddes Granger’s NJAC empowered Black people in Trinidad and Tobago, the politically most …

As a once respected media house, the Guardian may well believe maccoing to be its thing. But as a former journalism lecturer, I am very sure it isn’t mine. I am not, therefore, in the least interested in knowing who Michelle-Lee Ahye’s partner is. Or his or her sex. Or his or her gender. …

“If white America were judged by the quality of its people,” Muhammad Ali might have said, “the USA might not finish too high on any list.” Ali was like that, never pulling his punches, unbowed, cowed neither by Joe Frazier’s aggression nor George Foreman’s power nor the might of Uncle …