The following is the fourth part of Owen Thompson’s recall of that unforgettable summer in 1976 which ushered in the West Indies cricket team’s glory years: From the very first snippets we heard of the Rastaman Vibration album, the Queen’s Royal College Sixth Form, Upper and Lower, launched into fervent …
Read More »Clive Lloyd’s 1975-76 WI (Pt 3): Marauding ‘Mikey’ terrorises England
The following is the third part of Owen Thompson’s recall of that unforgettable summer in 1976 which ushered in the West Indies cricket team’s glory years: There was one final seminal moment to that summer. The Fifth Test, from 12 August to the 17th, was a metaphor in two halves. …
Read More »Clive Lloyd’s 1975-76 WI (Pt 2): How Vibratious Bob set tone for Windies’ England tour
The following is the second part of Owen Thompson’s recall of that unforgettable summer in 1976 that ushered in the West Indies cricket team’s glory years: While the events of that 1975-76 tour of Australia unfolded (between October 1975 and February 1976), a certain Robert Nesta Marley was getting ready …
Read More »Clive Lloyd’s 1975-76 WI (Pt 1): Viv, voracious and vocal
In 1976, Tobago-born Owen Thompson was but a boy of 14 when Greg Chappell’s Australia put a 5-1 merciless whipping on Clive Lloyd’s West Indian cavaliers. That turned out to be the last time for a long, long time. In those days, Thompson, who now works in film and television …
Read More »Best: Will resentment ruin redemption time for Holder’s men against ‘relentless’ England?
‘Resentful,’ yes. Try as I might, however, nowhere in the dictionary could I find ‘relentfull’ or ‘relentful.’ But if I were West Indies coach Phillip Simmons, I would have minted one or the other word to use in my post-match comments on the third day of the decisive Third Test …
Read More »Asterisks and parentheses; why we shouldn’t write off WI’s Wisden chances
That cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties is, though never irrelevant, a very tired cliché. That Test cricket is the most severe examination a player can get, though not clichéd, is not exactly new. West Indies did learn a new cricketing truth today, however. It is that, even when …
Read More »Best: Will West Indies keel over and die? Holder to the rescue against Root’s rampant England
Conventional wisdom holds that Stuart Broad’s Sunday evening new ball spell killed off the West Indies chances in the Second Test at Old Trafford. The truth, however, is that, had Jason Holder been at the top of his game on Monday morning, he might have found a pulse where the …
Read More »Best: Holder’s West Indies to win the Wisden Trophy? You bet!
I am willing to wager more than a few quid on a West Indies victory. Only a handful of England’s actors (skipper Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes and Stuart Broad) remain on the 2020 set. But Jason Holder has no fewer than seven of his 2017 West Indians, including …
Read More »Captaincy playbook: ‘Careful captaincy’ made the difference for great West Indies sides
The West Indies has had a phenomenal number of exceptional cricketers in its history. The captains have been mostly middling. I restricted the playbooks to those of Frank Worrell, Richie Benaud and Mike Brearley simply because they were known as thinking men—able in both the technical and ‘man-management’ aspects of …
Read More »Captaincy playbook: Worrell banned cards before Tests but would take players out
It was reported that during the 2019 ICC World Cup, the England team pulled up and did some soul searching. They revisited videos of sessions featuring themselves—not at play—but talking about their feelings. Their feelings. It takes a lot of courage to do that; courage and trust. I’m thinking here …
Read More »The run of a lifetime: the inimitable, ‘non-sixy’ West Indies icon Sir Everton Weekes
Practically all the tributes that have congregated in memory of Sir Everton Weekes have come from cricketers and sports writers. They list his age, his career statistics and his batting style. Some have recounted an encounter. Cricket reporters tend to give the numbers; cricket writers are more interested in telling …
Read More »CWI honours late Sir Everton Weekes: a Founding Father of West Indies Cricket Excellence
“[…] In his career, Sir Everton played 48 Test matches and made 4,455 runs at an average of 58.61 per innings. This included a world record five consecutive centuries in 1948: scores of 141 against England in Jamaica, followed by scores of 128, 194, 162 and 101 in India. “In …
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