Two im­por­tant sport­ing events come up next month in June. First­ly, in crick­et, the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup bowls off on Sat­ur­day (June 1) in Dal­las, TX, sur­pris­ing­ly, with the USA tak­ing on Cana­da. On Sun­day (June 2), in Guyana, the West In­dies start their quest for a third T20 World Cup by tak­ing on Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Spare a se­ri­ous thought, though, for the play­ers from PNG as their gov­ern­ment has told the Unit­ed Na­tions that more than 2,000 peo­ple are be­lieved to have been buried alive by last Fri­day’s land­slide and has for­mal­ly asked for in­ter­na­tion­al help. At the mo­ment, it must be in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for them to fo­cus on crick­et when so much must be on their minds with events back at home.

Mean­while, the on­ly neg­a­tive news for the West In­dies is the in­jury to Ja­son Hold­er which rules him out of the tour­na­ment. It is in­deed a big blow for the West In­dies, not just be­cause of Hold­er’s abil­i­ty with bat and ball, but more so for his ex­pe­ri­ence which will be missed. When the go­ing gets tough, he has shown he can calm things down not on­ly with the bat and ball but to quick­ly analyse dif­fi­cult match sit­u­a­tions and how to cope with them. He has been re­placed by Obed Mc­Coy, who took five wick­ets against South Africa and was prob­a­bly se­lect­ed on his per­for­mances, but it is a move that I am not sure I agree with.

Now, I do ad­mire Mc­Coy’s abil­i­ty with the ball as he is a fine left-arm fast-medi­um bowler and of­fers the va­ri­ety of be­ing left-hand­ed, how­ev­er, my prob­lem with Mc­Coy is his bat­ting, as Hold­er can come in and give the West In­dies much-need­ed im­pe­tus with the bat in the lat­ter overs.

In­stead, I would have gone for Kyle May­ers. While his bowl­ing is not as good as Hold­er’s or Mc­Coy’s, he can give the team a cou­ple of use­ful overs and can com­pen­sate for Hold­er’s bat­ting with a good score of his own. In ad­di­tion, he can fill in at the top of the or­der if any of the spe­cial­ist bats­men do not come good ear­ly in the tour­na­ment.

Hav­ing just won the T20 se­ries against South Africa, the squad would be buoy­ant. Even though both teams were miss­ing many of their World Cup play­ers, the West In­dies would have come out the hap­pi­er of the teams. Bran­don King looked good with the bat, and if John­son Charles could car­ry his last score in­to the tour­na­ment, it would be good for the West In­dies.

Gu­dakesh Motie is turn­ing out to be a fine white-ball bowler, and his eight wick­ets in the three match­es will give him im­mense con­fi­dence in the World Cup games. Ros­ton Chase al­so per­formed well in the tour­na­ment and can play a piv­otal role for the West In­dies in the World Cup. The West In­dies will stand a good chance at home to go all the way, but they will have to play to the best of their abil­i­ty.

The oth­er im­por­tant event is on Wednes­day (June 5) when T&T starts its World Cup qual­i­fy­ing jour­ney to com­pete at the 2026 FI­FA World Cup, which will be held in Mex­i­co, the USA, and Cana­da. The War­riors take on Grena­da at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um at 7.30 pm and then trav­el to St Kitts and Nevis on June 8, to bat­tle against the Ba­hamas. The first game is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant to the T&T team, as they must get off to a win­ning start to seek World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Coach An­gus Eve has named a 39-mem­ber pro­vi­sion­al squad with no re­al sur­pris­es. What would be of in­ter­est is when he even­tu­al­ly whit­tles the squad down to the fi­nal 26 play­ers, who will then be ready to do bat­tle for the red, white, and black.

Un­like oth­er Caribbean coun­tries such as Ja­maica, T&T is dis­ad­van­taged with play­er se­lec­tion sim­ply be­cause oth­er coun­tries are al­lowed to se­lect play­ers who have a “longer” fam­i­ly tie such as grand­par­ents be­ing born in that coun­try. In T&T, it stops at the parental lev­el. In oth­er words, if you are born out­side of T&T and you wish to play for T&T, the on­ly way you can do so is if your par­ents are from T&T. If your grand­par­ents or great-grand­par­ents are from T&T, you can­not rep­re­sent the coun­try. Some oth­er Caribbean coun­tries have dif­fer­ent laws which go be­yond par­ents, which is why the Ja­maicans can field so many in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ballers play­ing in the Eng­lish Pre­mier League.

I am ex­treme­ly op­ti­mistic that the team will start on a win­ning note in their two match­es to open the World Cup qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment. They will have to work hard against a plucky Grena­di­an team that has a cou­ple of play­ers play­ing in the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, so it will not be a walkover. I ex­pect coach An­gus Eve, hav­ing seen all the play­ers on show in the two friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­als against Guyana, to se­lect his best team on the day and play good, at­trac­tive, en­ter­tain­ing foot­ball that will please the fans and bring vic­to­ry to T&T.

Speak­ing about fans, one can on­ly wish for the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um to be packed with thou­sands of fans to cheer on the T&T War­riors as they start their quest to bring glo­ry back to T&T foot­ball, just as the 2006 team did when they qual­i­fied for Ger­many. With three spots avail­able for au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion and one spot for an in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play­off, T&T stands a good chance as any to qual­i­fy. Good luck to the team as they start their World Cup jour­ney!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.