Hav­ing said in my col­umn at the end of May that June will be a big month for crick­et and foot­ball, it hasn’t dis­ap­point­ed. It start­ed with the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup and the open­ing rounds of the FI­FA World Cup 2026 qual­i­fi­ca­tion here in the CON­CA­CAF re­gion.

Per­haps I should be­gin with the lit­tle hic­cup by Trinidad & To­ba­go fail­ing to de­feat Grena­da in the open­ing game at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on June 5.

A crowd of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,500 came out ex­pect­ing a vic­to­ry against the Spice Boys but in the end, the T&T team had to come from be­hind to earn a hard-fought 2-2 draw. I thought the team start­ed slow­ly, and they ap­peared to lack the nec­es­sary in­ten­si­ty and quick move­ment off the ball to put the Grena­di­ans un­der pres­sure.

The pass­es were not crisp enough and it ap­peared that the T&T team was com­pla­cent as vic­to­ry would have eas­i­ly been theirs. But, as we all know, foot­ball is played on the field and Grena­da seemed to be more hun­gry than the lo­cal lads. They bul­lied the T&T play­ers off the ball; they were phys­i­cal and tough which ap­peared to rat­tle the War­riors.

It came as no sur­prise when Grena­da took the lead even though I thought ref­er­ee Mario Es­co­bar of Guatemala’s de­ci­sion to award a penal­ty kick to Grena­da for a hand­ball of­fence was ex­treme­ly harsh. The ball was trav­el­ing at speed and was quite close to Daniel Phillips giv­ing him very lit­tle time to re­act. In ad­di­tion, Phillips’ po­si­tion of his arm, in my opin­ion, did not make his body un­nat­u­ral­ly big­ger and in­deed, it was not on­ly a strange de­ci­sion but ar­guably an in­cor­rect one in law.

The re­sult­ing goal from the penal­ty kick gave the Grena­di­ans the con­fi­dence they need­ed and 4 min­utes lat­er, they led 2-0. This was the in­flec­tion point for T&T. At 2-0 down, the team sud­den­ly woke up and be­gan to put pres­sure on the op­po­si­tion. When they pulled a goal back be­fore half-time, the Hase­ly Craw­ford sta­di­um was ex­pect­ing some­thing big in the sec­ond half.

It was dis­ap­point­ing not to see the re-emer­gence of Levi Gar­cia for the start of the sec­ond half as I felt he was need­ed to en­gi­neer the come­back but cred­it to the play­ers as they fought the game with­out Gar­cia and when Re­on Moore equalised with 16 min­utes to go, the fans felt that the hosts were on top and would go on to win it.

How­ev­er, cred­it must go to the Grena­da team. They nev­er dropped their heads and de­served to come away with a 2-2 draw. It cer­tain­ly was not the start the T&T team want­ed but it served as a wake-up call and go­ing across to St Kitts and Nevis to bat­tle Ba­hamas meant T&T need­ed to win there by a big mar­gin.

It was an ex­cel­lent per­for­mance for T&T win­ning the game by 7-1. I sup­pose if the odd fan want­ed to be crit­i­cal, they can point to the fact that the team did not keep a clean sheet but they did hit the back of the net sev­en times. Sure, I would have loved to have seen the team keep a clean sheet as well and I would have liked to have seen more shots com­ing from the top of the penal­ty area. But this was a per­for­mance that the team need­ed as they had to re­bound af­ter the dis­ap­point­ment of the Grena­da game so ku­dos to them.

They still have a lot to play for as the qual­i­fiers re­sume in June 2025 with Grena­da at home to the Ba­hamas while T&T is at home to St Kitts and Nevis with the fi­nal game against Cos­ta Ri­ca away from home. I have all the con­fi­dence that the War­riors will pull through to the next round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion no one has to tell them that life will get tougher but hope­ful­ly, they will re­alise that on­ly the strong will sur­vive.

In World Cup crick­et, I did sug­gest hold­ing on to your seats as sur­pris­es were in store and no big­ger sur­prise came than the USA’s vic­to­ry against Pak­istan. I’ve said this be­fore, Pak­istan is one of the most in­con­sis­tent teams and you nev­er can tell which Pak­istan team will show up on the day. They should have beat­en In­dia but their bat­ting in the end lacked the ap­pli­ca­tion need­ed to get them over the line.

As I al­so men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, I am not hap­py with the pitch­es that are be­ing pro­duced as there has on­ly been one score of over 200 and in T20 crick­et fans come to see the ball go­ing be­yond the bound­ary with reg­u­lar­i­ty but in gen­er­al, bats­men have strug­gled to get scores close to 180 to 190.

Af­ter the game against Papua New Guinea, West In­dies came good against Ugan­da. It was a clin­i­cal per­for­mance, es­pe­cial­ly with the ball, and the hero was a lo­cal boy Akeal Ho­sein. I thought that if the West In­dies de­cid­ed to go with the ex­tra pace bowler, he may have missed out on se­lec­tion but they de­cid­ed to go with the ex­tra spin­ner and Ho­sein got his usu­al role of open­ing the bowl­ing.

I re­mem­ber see­ing Ho­sein as a young­ster play­ing for Queen’s Park and one day go­ing in­to the Oval, he was bat­ting in a club game and he was hit­ting the ball straight in an area known as the ‘V’—be­tween ex­tra cov­er and a wideish mid-on.

I nev­er laid my eyes on this guy be­fore and I was so im­pressed with him I en­quired as to who he was and I thought to my­self he was go­ing to be a su­perb bats­man.

In the fol­low­ing years, his left-arm bowl­ing has picked up and his bat­ting has fall­en away but he can still come in and make a use­ful con­tri­bu­tion. Akeal Ho­sein works ex­treme­ly hard at his game and when you hear his sto­ry on how he has made crick­et a ca­reer, you have to take your hat off to this fine young man on his progress.

I am writ­ing this col­umn not know­ing the re­sult of the game against New Zealand but I hear peo­ple say­ing West In­dies should beat the Ki­wis. While I agree with those sen­ti­ments, New Zealand is a dan­ger­ous op­po­nent and they have a fan­tas­tic bowl­ing line-up with the likes of Trent Boult, Matt Hen­ry, Lock­ie Fer­gu­son, Tim Southee, and Mitchell Sant­ner.

If the West In­dies bat­ting does not click, they could be be­hind the eight ball and hop­ing the bowlers can do the job but with Kane Williamson lead­ing the Ki­wi’s bat­ting, they are not to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

West In­dies must be hop­ing to play a per­fect game and be ready to take their place in the Su­per Eights. They will not want to leave it too late and find them­selves in a must-win po­si­tion against Afghanistan—a team that has proven to spring quite a few sur­pris­es and can be dan­ger­ous on their day.