The spirit of George Orwell lay heavy over Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday evening after favourites Australia got past underdogs Afghanistan in the 50-over World Cup match. Over the entrance to the losers’ dressing room, my mind’s eye saw, adapted, the legend from his Animal Farm: ‘Two legs good, no …
Read More »Best: Will West Indies batsmen get IPL Easter resurrection lessons from mind coach Brian Lara?
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 …
Read More »T2021 W/C PM: Why Carlos Brathwaite puts the peerless Prince in 2nd place
We does win, dem does lorse. Mathematically, defending champions West Indies were knocked out of the 2021 T20 World Cup when they failed to beat Sri Lanka on Thursday 4 November. In fact, Kieron Pollard’s side were effectively out of the World Cup after they could only muster 55 in …
Read More »T2021 W/C: Romanticising Carlos Brathwaite; how 2016 torpedoed Pollard’s WI in UAE
History, they say, is written by the victors. For just over a week, we still enjoy the title of defending T20 World Cup champions. Let us, therefore, while we still can, rewrite history. Not, like Christopher Columbus and the Spaniards and all the self-serving colonial powers, with a view to …
Read More »T2021 W/C: Pressure does buss pipe; Best considers the strain on Pollard’s troops
Today, I want to return to the subject of Chris Gayle’s angry public reaction to perceived provocation by Curtly Ambrose. Obliquely, not frontally. I want to suggest that, heated though it was, it may well conceal a submerged iceberg. We might properly begin with West Indian royalty. But it seems …
Read More »Ex-West Indies star, Marlon Samuels, charged by ICC with four breaches of Anti-Corruption Code
Former West Indies cricketer Marlon Samuels has been charged by the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Anti-Corruption Unit for four breaches of Emirates Cricket Board’s Anti-Corruption Code. The charges are related to his participation in a T10 League in Abu Dhabi in 2019. The 40-year-old Samuels is accused of failing to …
Read More »T2021 W/C: ‘Fab Four’ (Pt 2)—Roneil picks Hetmyer, Pooran in dream WI’s XI to counter spin threat
Now that the West Indies’ ‘Fab Four’, the ‘Real McCoy’ and Fabian ‘Bucket Hands’ Allen are out of the way, let us take a close look at the composition of the rest of the WI T20I squad. Unlike in the Test arena, where WI seem to be on a never-ending …
Read More »Music to WI ears: the Fat Lady prepares to sing for Windies coach, Richard Pybus
It didn’t take long, did it? Mouth open and ’tory jump out. Not one mouth, four mouth—not counting Dr Ralph Gonsalves who mouth cyar stay close when is West Indies cricket people talking bout. So first, it was Phil Simmons, who has never felt he wasn’t free to speak his …
Read More »Dhoni, Sobers or Warne as World T20 skipper? Best looks at ESPN’s World XI Team
Neither Brian Lara with his multiple batting records nor Curtly Ambrose with his deadly destructive 20.99 ODI bowling average was deemed good enough to make the final ESPN World XI. Joel Garner, whose ODI strike rate is an impressive 50.8 and whose average is even more impressive at an incredible …
Read More »PITT STOP: ODI numbers don’t lie; WICB must stop running its own cricket team out!
“The supply of cricketers is not nearly as great here in the West Indies as in Pakistan, say, with its almost 195 million or India (1.2 billion) or even England (55 million). “Inexplicably, however, we have found a way to reduce the supply of players available for international cricket by …
Read More »Windies cricketers get legal advice on MOU; Bravo confirms Samuels split
The West Indies cricket team has retained legal counsel in its bid to overturn the contentious Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)/Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that was signed on their behalf by West Indies Players Association (WIPA) president Wavel Hinds in September. The agreement was allegedly struck without the approval or knowledge …
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 …
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