What a whirl­wind of awe­some sports it’s been since last Fri­day! And by “awe­some,” you know I’m not talk­ing about West In­dies crick­et or the T&T Crick­et Board – that would be like prais­ing a leaky faucet. But I’d be re­miss if I didn’t ded­i­cate at least the first part of this col­umn to the squad se­lect­ed for the up­com­ing Test se­ries against Aus­tralia. Be­cause, well, it’s al­ways a good laugh!

LOS AN­GE­LES – West In­dies all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er will lead the Los An­ge­les Knight Rid­ers in the 2025 Ma­jor League Crick­et in the Unit­ed States.

SOUTHAMP­TON, Eng­land – West In­dies head coach Daren Sam­my has ad­mit­ted that he is not to­tal­ly sur­prised by the re­cent de­ci­sion by T20 su­per­star Nicholas Pooran to re­tire from in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et at the age of 29.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Dr. Karen Pil­grim is the new chair­per­son of the Caribbean Re­gion­al An­ti-Dop­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tion (RA­DO), be­com­ing the first fe­male to hold the po­si­tion in the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s his­to­ry.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Left-arm spin­ner Za­min Amin is set to lead a West In­dies Mas­ters side on their tour of Eng­land from June 14 to 28.

The Clarke Road Unit­ed pair of De­journ Charles and Joshua James, to­geth­er with Pow­er­gen’s Jon-Russ Jages­sar, pow­ered So­ca Kings to a con­vinc­ing eight-wick­et win over Leatherback Strik­ers in the Dream XI Trinidad T10 Blast at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do, Fri­day.

De­spite play­ing un­beat­en for the sea­son in Tier I of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, De­fence Force as­sis­tant coach De­vorn Jorsling is brac­ing for their tough­est test to date.

Phillip Watts, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, host­ed a cour­tesy call on Wednes­day with Jon Dean, British High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­hanced col­lab­o­ra­tion in sport, youth de­vel­op­ment, and in­ter­na­tion­al en­gage­ment.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – For the first time in its crick­et­ing his­to­ry, the West In­dies will take on emerg­ing na­tion Nepal in a bi­lat­er­al se­ries lat­er this year.

For­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Kelvin Jack is urg­ing fans to make the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain their "fortress" in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the coun­try's qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the FI­FA World Cup to be staged joint­ly in the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

T&T will again tan­gle with re­gion­al ri­val Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Bermu­da in the fi­nal play-off round for the World Cup Qual­i­fiers dur­ing the FI­FA Match Win­dow of Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 2025.

GEORGE­TOWN – Guyana is set to host the fourth sea­son of the Women’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (WC­PL), which is sched­uled to bowl off on Sep­tem­ber 6.