?Hugh Hen­der­son

When I read that West In­dies play­ers and of­fi­cials were pos­si­bly "tak­ing in front" by claim­ing that the tour to Bangladesh would be a big chal­lenge, I did not know if to laugh or cry. My own view was/is that if at the present time WI can't beat the hell out of Bangladesh in every form of the game, then our next op­po­nent should be a "Down the Is­lands XI". When we lost the T20 match, I near­ly did cry and be­gan to won­der if our play­ers in fact did know what they were talk­ing about. Imag­ine Sam­my (one run) bat­ting ahead of Ramdin (ten not out off ten balls). How­ev­er, on Fri­day last, with Dar­ren Sam­my not play­ing and De­nesh Ramdin cap­tain­ing the team, the Tri­ni play­ers rose to the oc­ca­sion and pulled off a 40-run vic­to­ry in ODI No 1, scor­ing 298, which to­tal has not hap­pened in a very long time.

With De­nesh as cap­tain and do­ing his usu­al top class wick­et­keep­ing job, was it mere co-in­ci­dence that Tri­ni team mates Lendl Sim­mons with 122, Adri­an Barath (21 re­tired hurt), Dar­ren Bra­vo scor­ing 20 pret­ty runs, Kieron Pol­lard with a time­ly 50 and Ravi Ram­paul tak­ing key wick­ets, pulled out an ex­tra ef­fort to make Ramdin look good and hope­ful­ly give the se­lec­tors thought for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture?

Well done guys, even though I know it is West In­dies and not T&T and Samuels and Rus­sell al­so con­tributed. It now begs the ques­tion, will Sim­mons and Ramdin be giv­en a WICB con­tract for the com­ing year? Life is in­deed strange, you are out in the cold for a year and then overnight, you are cap­tain of West In­dies. With Sam­my's favourite word in mind, that is def­i­nite­ly a "pos­i­tive".

Some thoughts on Nokia T20

The T20 Nokia Cham­pi­ons Club Tro­phy was won by Mum­bai In­di­ans and the Gayle (five runs) ver­sus Pol­lard (two runs) an­tic­i­pat­ed six hit­ting epic, fiz­zled out like a SoE gang ar­rest. My prob­lem for the fu­ture is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of "Club" and how T&T fits in­to the pic­ture when oth­er teams can af­ford to buy big names from oth­er coun­tries to play for them, while T&T is 100 per cent T&T na­tion­als. Un­der such con­di­tions will we ever be able to com­pete on lev­el terms? Can you imag­ine what could hap­pen if we were able to buy three proven in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers from oth­er coun­tries or if Gayle, Pol­lard and Dwayne Bra­vo played for us? In the mean­time, well bowled Sunil Nar­ine!

With $2.5 mil­lion on the line in the fi­nal, it was shame­ful that the um­pire gave Gayle out LBW with a poor/ques­tion­able de­ci­sion and nei­ther Gayle nor his team could do any­thing about it. We have all the nec­es­sary tech­nol­o­gy to help um­pires with close LBW ap­peals, why not use it es­pe­cial­ly in high pro­file sit­u­a­tions, when pre­sid­ing um­pires are quick to call on the third um­pire for run-outs that we can tell from our liv­ing rooms are not out? I note T&T "won" three cat­e­gories in the tour­na­ment (a) biggest mys­tery-Sunil Nar­ine; (b) biggest melt­down-Ravi Ram­paul and (c) biggest mis­take-Lendl Sim­mons' run out. With over 230 six­es hit, one would imag­ine that just about every play­er hit at least one, but noth­ing com­pared with David Warn­er's in­cred­i­ble 135 with eleven six­es for New South Wales-that was some­thing else! I am glad I was able to watch all the above.

Look Loy tak­ing in front

Bermu­da two, T&T one...well, we have re­al­ly reached! I went to Bermu­da in the late 70's and the ter­ri­to­ry was so "large", I could have kicked a foot­ball from one end of the is­land to the oth­er. Six months ago when Ot­to Pfis­ter was screened/hired by Kei­th Look Loy I be­lieve, I wrote that hir­ing a coach who was old­er than me (and I am old!) was not ex­act­ly for­ward look­ing but wished the coach well any­way think­ing at the time that even with­out a coach we could beat Bermu­da. Mr Look Loy has re­cent­ly re­signed from the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor post in lo­cal foot­ball so maybe he is "tak­ing in front" but I did en­joy see­ing Ot­to Pfis­ter's re­cent tirade on TV and won­der if that is the first step to­wards his res­ig­na­tion. What I am not clear about is how in my mind the coach is sup­port­ing his play­ers, while past play­er Brent San­cho ap­pears to dis­agree with the ap­proach of the coach. In the 2012 Bud­get, I am not sure how much mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed to sport but are we go­ing to con­tin­ue spend­ing lim­it­less hard to find mon­ey to reach Brazil in 2014 or should we spend an ac­cept­able amount (what­ev­er such is) and in­vest more from now for 2018, which I rec­om­mend­ed right af­ter the last World Cup?

Ed­wards case hard to un­der­stand

While there is al­ways an­oth­er side to a sto­ry, I find the case of Car­los Ed­wards and his sev­er­al dri­ving of­fences in Eng­land, dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, as­sum­ing he is an in­tel­li­gent sports­man, which a high­ly in­tel­lec­tu­al friend at Uni­ver­si­ty of­ten pro­claimed to be an oxy­moron! He could nev­er link an Amer­i­can foot­ball play­er with in­tel­li­gence and on one mem­o­rable oc­ca­sion when Guy joined the din­ner line per­spir­ing, some­one asked: "Guy, why are you so ex­cit­ed?" Guy's fa­mous re­ply was: "Be­cause two min­utes ago a foot­ball play­er told me 'hel­lo' with­out mak­ing a mis­take!" Isn't that a clas­sic? Two years ago I con­sid­ered Car­los the best foot­baller on our na­tion­al team, so to read this lat­est de­ba­cle is very un­for­tu­nate. How stu­pid can a sen­si­ble per­son be? The prob­a­ble an­swer is "very" and no doubt ap­plies to each of us over time.

In­trigued by ICC chair­man

I was in­trigued to read the ICC Chair­man state that "play­er and pub­lic in­ter­est in Test crick­et is at an all-time high" which made me check my home ad­dress to en­sure I was on plan­et Earth on which most Test crick­et is played. I do not like to chal­lenge these "big shots" who know much more than me, but my eye­sight is good enough to note that Test grounds are in most cas­es vir­tu­al­ly emp­ty and crowd at­ten­dance is per­haps a good cri­te­ri­on to as­cer­tain pub­lic in­ter­est though I ad­mit there can be great pub­lic in­ter­est if half the world watch­es the Tests on tele­vi­sion. Is the world mad or just me?

Proud of Stephen Ames

I find it amaz­ing that peren­ni­al No 1 Tiger Woods should fall so quick­ly out of the top 50 in World golf rank­ings and fin­ish tied for a low­ly 30th place in his most re­cent tour­na­ment. How does such an ex­tra­or­di­nary tal­ent dis­ap­pear so rapid­ly? It is al­so sur­pris­ing to see that Stephen Ames is now ranked 271 in the world but what­ev­er Stephen does or does not do from now on, he has put T&T on the sports map with the best of our lo­cal he­roes and he should be very proud of his many achieve­ments on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene.

Men­tion of Tiger go­ing down­stream quick­ly, re­minds me in a much less­er way that re­cent ten­nis No 1 Rafa Nadal has lost six fi­nals in a row to No­vak Djokovic, and last week was beat­en by Andy Mur­ray, los­ing the third set 6-0. When last did that hap­pen? Three days ago, Nadal lost to al­most un­known Flo­ri­an May­er in the Shang­hai Mas­ters and failed to reach the quar­ter fi­nals for the sec­ond year in a row. It is true that get­ting to the top is tough but stay­ing there is even hard­er.

Let's laugh

Let me end with two hope­ful­ly amus­ing sport­ing sto­ries about my friend Den­nis E.

(a) In yet an­oth­er Sun­day crick­et match at Guaracara Park, our open­ing bowler, who liked to be called "Fred" since he thought both Fred True­man and him­self were equal­ly quick, tripped on his fi­nal de­liv­ery stride and fell spread­ea­gled on the grass (which was hi­lar­i­ous by it­self!), as the ball lit­er­al­ly rolled along the pitch to­wards the bats­man who wait­ed ea­ger­ly for it to reach, swung his bat lusti­ly, missed the ball com­plete­ly and could not be­lieve his eyes when he saw the bails ly­ing on the ground. Apoplec­tic with rage, he screamed at the um­pire: "That could nev­er be out; the damn ball bumped TEN %#@& times!"

In a split sec­ond, wick­et­keep­er Den­nis shout­ed: "ELEVEN %#@& times, mate. That's your trou­ble – you can't bloody count!" There fol­lowed an ex­change of words that Moth­er Tere­sa would not have re­peat­ed, so I will stop there but I am so hap­py I played many games with Den­nis to en­joy his cock­ney sense of hu­mour.

(b) Den­nis al­so con­sid­ered him­self a pre­cur­sor of soc­cer hero David Beck­ham so will­ing­ly vol­un­teered to play in any po­si­tion on the Club sec­ond XI foot­ball team. The day came when he was asked to kick a penal­ty, and though you will not be­lieve this, the fol­low­ing took place. Den­nis took "years" to place the ball ex­act­ly to his lik­ing; mea­sured off his run to the inch; hitched up his shorts and looked at the crowd to en­sure we all were ready to wit­ness the goal of the cen­tu­ry. In­cred­i­bly, Den­nis swung his right leg in­to ac­tion, missed the ball com­plete­ly as the goalie dived to the left in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a "bul­let," end­ing up ly­ing flat out on the ground grop­ing at thin air, won­der­ing where the ball had gone! As Den­nis's leg came back down to earth, his heel mis­tak­en­ly slammed the ball back to cen­tre field while the play­ers stood in stunned dis­be­lief be­fore dou­bling up with laugh­ter. I don't think I have ever seen a crowd laugh as long or as hard even at a Learie Joseph com­e­dy act and we cer­tain­ly saw the penal­ty of the cen­tu­ry, in fact the mil­len­ni­um! Please do not doubt me, it re­al­ly did hap­pen! Have a great week and God bless beau­ti­ful T&T.