There’s on­ly one way to kick off this col­umn, and that's by rais­ing a glass to the re­mark­able achieve­ments of Keshorn Wal­cott and Jereem Richards. Their re­cent tri­umphs have not mere­ly put this coun­try on the world map; they have paint­ed it in bold, vi­brant colours for all to see. Once again, the sheer, unadul­ter­at­ed pow­er of sport has been un­leashed, re­mind­ing us all of its ca­pac­i­ty to in­spire and unite.

First, let's turn our at­ten­tion to the ath­letes who have made us all swell with pride. Keshorn Wal­cott is phe­nom­e­nal, a leg­end of his sport. This is an ath­lete who won gold at the 2012 Olympic Games in Lon­don, an oc­ca­sion in which I had the plea­sure of at­tend­ing. I re­call the elec­tric at­mos­phere when he won gold and, in do­ing so, trans­formed every pub and pub­lic square in­to a spon­ta­neous Tri­ni "fete". Flags of red, white, and black ma­te­ri­alised out of thin air as if by mag­ic, and for one glo­ri­ous mo­ment, every non-Eng­lish per­son was from T&T.

Four years lat­er in Brazil, Wal­cott was ex­pect­ed to re­peat his tri­umph, but he was still able to win a bronze medal, which in it­self is a com­mend­able achieve­ment. Since then, he has bat­tled in­juries and a loss of form, lead­ing many to write him off. He must have felt deep down that he could nev­er reach the heights of 2012 again. But as the adage goes, "form is tem­po­rary, but class is per­ma­nent," and Wal­cott is pure class. Thir­teen years af­ter his ini­tial gold, he has once again reached the pin­na­cle, de­feat­ing a star-stud­ded field that in­clud­ed the de­fend­ing World cham­pi­on Neer­aj Chopra and the reign­ing Olympic cham­pi­on Ar­shad Nadeem. It says a lot for his per­sis­tence, re­silience, be­lief and de­ter­mi­na­tion. Not many ath­letes make such a come­back in their sport.

Then there's Jereem “the Dream” Richards. His jour­ney is less a come­back and more a re­lent­less climb. He's been knock­ing on the door so much late­ly, his knuck­les must be swollen. A bronze in the 200m at the 2017 World Cham­pi­onships and suc­cess­ful runs at the World In­door Cham­pi­onships showed his po­ten­tial. Though fin­ish­ing fourth in last year's Olympics and not medal­ing in a ma­jor out­door cham­pi­onship since his 2017 suc­cess has un­doubt­ed­ly been a bit­ter pill to swal­low, he is an­oth­er mo­ti­vat­ed ath­lete.

He has now de­liv­ered a per­for­mance for the ages. But in that fi­nal race, from the seem­ing­ly cursed lane two, he found a gear no one knew he had, as it ap­peared he was in po­si­tion five or six com­ing in­to the straight. It was a spec­tac­u­lar surge that turned what looked like de­feat in­to a na­tion­al record of 43.73 sec­onds. Though he couldn’t quite catch Bu­sang Ke­bi­nat­shipi of Botswana, who clocked 43.53 sec­onds, he still gave us a race to re­mem­ber.

Once again, thank you, Keshorn and Jereem. These ath­letes, these he­roes, have brought im­mense ho­n­our to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Their suc­cess, how­ev­er, begs an ob­vi­ous, crit­i­cal ques­tion: how do we, as a coun­try, har­ness and nur­ture such tal­ent to en­sure our ath­letes are giv­en the best chance of win­ning gold at the Olympics in 2028 and be­yond? Our ath­letes have all the tal­ent in the world, but they of­ten strug­gle to com­pete due to a lack of re­sources.

Now is the time for our gov­ern­ment to recog­nise sport as a pow­er­ful tool for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and in­vest ac­cord­ing­ly. It's time we start­ed fund­ing our sports like they're the na­tion­al trea­sure they are. The ap­point­ment of var­i­ous state boards has been swift, yet the board for SporTT - The Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go - re­mains no­tice­ably ab­sent, a cru­cial piece of the puz­zle still in lim­bo. I hope the mag­i­cal per­for­mances of these two world-class ath­letes will fi­nal­ly make sport a pri­or­i­ty for fund­ing, be­cause when it comes to punch­ing above its weight, this lit­tle twin-is­land na­tion has the kind of punch Ter­ence Craw­ford would be proud of.

As if Keshorn and Jereem's hero­ics weren't enough, we now turn our at­ten­tion to the CPL fi­nal. Can the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) cap off this mem­o­rable sport­ing week with an ear­ly Re­pub­lic Day gift?

What a show­piece of a fi­nal it promis­es to be. Ad­mit­ted­ly, when the fi­nal four teams qual­i­fied for the last three games, I had my mon­ey on the St Lu­cia Kings (SLK), as they were play­ing a brand of crick­et that was both ruth­less and en­ter­tain­ing, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to take the crown from them. How­ev­er, they stum­bled at the most crit­i­cal junc­ture and let them­selves down bad­ly, play­ing two aw­ful games in Qual­i­fi­er num­ber one and num­ber two.

In stark con­trast to SLK, the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (GAW) have come back with a vengeance and are a for­mi­da­ble force on their home turf. Mean­while, TKR have hit form at the right time and eas­i­ly dis­posed of the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Fal­cons (ABF) in the elim­i­na­tor, and then treat­ed the SLK with com­plete dis­dain.

Even though Munro was dis­missed ear­ly, the re­turn to scin­til­lat­ing form of skip­per Nicholas Pooran has been a game-chang­er. When he is in the mood, he can sin­gle-hand­ed­ly take the game away from the op­po­si­tion, set­ting the stage for the ex­plo­sive pow­er of Kieron Pol­lard and An­dre Rus­sell. As for the fi­nal it­self, it's an even con­test; a true 50-50 af­fair; the per­fect fi­nal. The GAW will have its hos­tile home sup­port, a fac­tor that can­not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

Their bat­ting, how­ev­er, re­mains their Achilles heel. They ap­pear to have set­tled on an open­ing pair now in Ben Mc­Der­mott and Quentin Samp­son, but I am not con­vinced, and if they take risks against the qual­i­ty at­tack of TKR, they may find them­selves back in the dugout ear­ly. Shai Hope is the cru­cial wick­et. If he bats deep with sup­port from Shim­ron Het­my­er, the War­riors could get up­wards of 175 to 180 runs.

At the back end of their in­nings, they have the de­struc­tive Dwaine Pre­to­rius and Ro­mario Shep­herd, but the GAW have noth­ing more to of­fer in the bat­ting de­part­ment, and if TKR bowls ac­cord­ing to a plan and Hope and Het­my­er do not click, the GAW may find 160 a tough to­tal ei­ther bat­ting first or chas­ing. Their strength is in their bowl­ing. It’s var­ied with a good pace at­tack and spin­ners of high qual­i­ty.

No doubt Pre­to­rius and Shep­herd may open the bowl­ing, but they would have looked at Gu­dakesh Motie to open and get the scalp of the dan­ger­ous Col­in­Munro. Motie is bowl­ing su­perbly, and with the ever­green Im­ran Tahir, they will pose prob­lems for the TKR bats­men. I am not con­vinced by Has­san Khan, and Moeen Ali has not been in the best of form.TKR has a bet­ter all-round team than the GAW, with a steady open­ing part­ner­ship, and if they get off, they can give TKR the type of start that is need­ed for T20 crick­et.

Pooran, fol­lowed by Pol­lard and Rus­sell, can be in­cred­i­bly de­struc­tive on the night. The strength of TKR bowl­ing is al­so de­pen­dent on their spin­ners. Sunil Nar­ine is bowl­ing bet­ter than ever, and when did a bowler get a dou­ble-wick­et maid­en in the 19th over of a T20 game?

You can de­pend on Nar­ine to do some­thing like that. Akeal Ho­sein has al­so come in­to his own and is bowl­ing well. Then there is Us­man "Ram­bo" Tariq. Nev­er in all my years of look­ing at crick­et have I seen an ac­tion and a cel­e­bra­tion like that. Where in heav­en’s name did they pick him up from?

Ul­ti­mate­ly, TKR seems to have the mo­men­tum, and a com­plete per­for­mance from them will be tough to beat. But you can nev­er, ever write off the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors at home. What­ev­er the out­come, it is go­ing to be an in­trigu­ing fi­nal; you dare not miss a sin­gle ball.

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.