The sport­ing land­scape of 2026 is mov­ing with pace, and if you blinked dur­ing the last fort­night, you like­ly missed some epic sports. From the dusty pitch­es of the Ash­es to the blue hard­courts of Mel­bourne, here is a break­down of the tri­umphs, the "what ifs," and some nos­tal­gia.

Since my last col­umn was writ­ten be­fore the fi­nal Ash­es Test was played, let me con­clude my per­spec­tive on the se­ries. Aus­tralia walked away with a 4-1 se­ries vic­to­ry—a score­line that feels both com­fort­able and en­tire­ly pre­dictable. I must ad­mit, af­ter Eng­land were com­plete­ly thrashed in the first three Tests (in­clud­ing a se­ries open­er that end­ed so quick­ly the cater­ers bare­ly had time to un­pack), I feared the worst for the Eng­lish, think­ing they were go­ing to be white­washed and lose all five Tests.

They have al­ways said that Eng­land prefers to lose a war rather than a Test match, and so to bounce back and win the fourth Test in two days proves that no­tion. Al­so, Eng­land’s re­solve in com­ing back af­ter their dis­as­trous start to the se­ries shows they pos­sess some sort of fight­ing spir­it. Their vic­to­ry in the fourth Test was a blend of Eng­lish grit and Aussie com­pla­cen­cy.

Aus­tralia, seem­ing­ly bored by their own dom­i­nance, thought they would have won the fourth Test com­fort­ably. Af­ter scor­ing 152 in their first in­nings, they sent their op­po­nents pack­ing for 110 runs and led by 42 runs head­ing in­to the sec­ond in­nings. Af­ter get­ting to 82 for 3 in their sec­ond in­nings, this is where the com­pla­cen­cy could have stepped in. The Aussies were then dis­missed for 132 (sev­en wick­ets go­ing down for 50 runs), leav­ing the classy, run-ma­chine Steve Smith high and dry on 24 not out. Even though the Eng­lish strug­gled on a dif­fi­cult pitch to get to 178, they achieved vic­to­ry with four wick­ets to spare.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, though, class is class. With their pride dent­ed, the Aussies picked it up in the fi­nal Test, which was a clas­sic that went all five days on a true Test match pitch - full of ear­ly runs on the first three days and gave a lit­tle more as­sis­tance to the bowlers on the fourth day, and by day five, start­ed to turn. The Aussies were just too good, with a dis­play of depth that bor­ders on the un­fair, win­ning the Ash­es se­ries with­out full-time ac­cess to Josh Ha­zle­wood, Pat Cum­mins (in one Test), and Nathan Ly­on (in two Tests). This is clear ev­i­dence of a de­vel­op­men­tal sys­tem that seems to man­u­fac­ture elite crick­eters in a lab to fill the void and per­form at op­ti­mal lev­els. Not many teams in the world can do that.

The sil­ver lin­ing for Eng­land—and a bit­ter pill for us in the Caribbean—was Ja­cob Bethell. At just 22, the Bar­ba­dos-born left-han­der pro­duced a 154-run mas­ter­class that felt like a glimpse in­to the next decade of crick­et. While it’s heart­en­ing to see a son of Har­ri­son Col­lege con­quer the world stage, see­ing him do so in Three Li­ons rather than the Ma­roon is a re­cur­ring re­gion­al tragedy. His Test bat­ting av­er­age at the mo­ment is a healthy 43.27, and I ex­pect him to con­tin­ue some­where in the 40s and more as his Test ca­reer pro­gress­es. His left arm or­tho­dox spin bowl­ing can al­so im­prove. Eng­land hasn't just found a play­er; they’ve found a cor­ner­stone to build their fu­ture around.

Stay­ing in Aus­tralia for the first Grand Slam of the year, the 2026 Aus­tralian Open will com­mence on Sun­day (Jan­u­ary 18), with the main draw. The two best men’s play­ers in the world, Jan­nik Sin­ner (the de­fend­ing Aus­tralian Open cham­pi­on) and Car­los Al­caraz, no doubt, will go head to head again. Al­caraz would be look­ing to take the crown and pre­vent Sin­ner from turn­ing the Mel­bourne tro­phy in­to his per­son­al prop­er­ty for a fourth con­sec­u­tive year. I can’t look be­yond these two for the crown.

When one looks down the seeds for the men’s sin­gles, there are some very good play­ers out­side of No­vak Djokovic, who sits at seed No 4. While he re­mains a ti­tan, the "Sin­ner-Al­caraz" ceil­ing looks in­creas­ing­ly im­pen­e­tra­ble. It ap­pears No­vak may end his ca­reer with 25 slams—stand­ing alone in his­to­ry, yet per­haps one short of that elu­sive 26th.

Of the oth­er seeds, I like the No 9 Amer­i­can Ben Shel­ton, a won­der­ful strik­er of the ball who pos­sess­es a full reper­toire of shots, but can be a lit­tle bit er­rat­ic. When play­ing against Al­caraz or Sin­ner, es­pe­cial­ly in those long ral­lies, it is im­per­a­tive to out-gun them shot for shot and stay in the point. I some­how think Al­caraz will turn the ta­bles on Sin­ner this year, but he will have to bat­tle as if it's a war to win it.

The women’s sin­gles should be more com­pet­i­tive, with pre­dictabil­i­ty be­ing a for­eign con­cept. The top seed and big favourite is Ary­na Sa­balen­ka; how­ev­er, some­times she is her own worst en­e­my. If she is not on song, she gets flus­tered and frus­trat­ed with her coach­ing staff and her­self all dur­ing a match, which can lead to her down­fall. Iga Swiatek can take the ti­tle, but un­less she is on top of her game, she re­mains sus­cep­ti­ble to a stun­ning up­set by a less gift­ed op­po­nent. The USA pair of Co­co Gauff and Aman­da Anisi­mo­va are dan­ger­ous op­po­nents and on their day, can de­feat any­one. Of the two, Anisi­mo­va hits the ball far more pow­er­ful­ly than Gauff, but her tem­pera­ment is not as strong. I per­son­al­ly like Ele­na Ry­bak­i­na, she is cool­ness per­son­i­fied. How­ev­er, since win­ning Wim­ble­don in 2022, she has not been able to win an­oth­er Grand Slam, so it may be out of her reach un­less she brings her A game.

The de­fend­ing cham­pi­on is Madi­son Keys, an­oth­er pow­er­ful hit­ter who sur­prised the world when she de­feat­ed Sa­balen­ka in the fi­nal last year. Some­how, I can’t see her re­peat­ing those hero­ics, and she would do well to get in­to the se­mi-fi­nals. It’s a very com­pet­i­tive women’s field, which in­cludes the ever­green Venus Williams at 45. The win­ner can be any play­er who brings some good form in­to the tour­na­ment.

Fi­nal­ly, the West In­dies Un­der-19 team be­gan its quest to be crowned Men’s U-19 World Cup 2026 cham­pi­ons. They take on Tan­za­nia to­day (Thurs­day), and ad­mit­ted­ly, I don’t know much about the squad ex­cept for the games they played against Eng­land and Sri Lan­ka.

Joshua Dorne, the cap­tain, was the high­est run get­ter in both se­ries, with Jonathan Van Lange, the vice cap­tain, the next best run get­ter from the West In­dies. In the bowl­ing de­part­ment, Ja­keem Pol­lard, Shaquan Belle and Vi­tel Lawes should be among the lead­ing wick­et tak­ers. The play­er I ex­pect the most from should be Jew­el An­drew, who has played three ODIs and five T20Is for the West In­dies se­nior team.

Hav­ing al­ready tast­ed the se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, I ex­pect that with that ex­pe­ri­ence and play­ing against top-qual­i­ty in­ter­na­tion­al bowl­ing, An­drew will use his tal­ent to bol­ster the U-19 team’s bat­ting. Hope­ful­ly, he will ap­ply a pro­fes­sion­al men­tal fil­ter to his im­mense tal­ent, as he could car­ry this bat­ting line­up on his shoul­ders.

The tour­na­ment brings back some nos­tal­gia for me, hav­ing had the ho­n­our of cap­tain­ing the West In­dies U-19 team on a tour of Eng­land many, many years ago. There was no U-19 World Cup in those days, but it would have been in­ter­est­ing to see how we would have feared as a team with the likes of Jeff Du­jon, Wayne Daniel, Richard Austin, Lock­hart Se­bastien, Vic­tor Ed­dy, Em­mer­son Trot­man, Ty­rone Knight, Timur Mo­hammed, Hyl­ton Gor­don, Babu Sankar, Rad­hay Solomon, and fel­low Tri­nis Arnold Oliv­er, Jaic­hand Kan­hai and Frank Williams.

Nice mem­o­ries, but let's wish the 2026 West In­dies U-19 team the best of luck. Crick­et in the Caribbean is cur­rent­ly a cock­tail of pol­i­tics, promis­es, and "ole talk." A dom­i­nant run by the

U-19s wouldn't just be a vic­to­ry; it would be a much-need­ed re­minder of what we are ca­pa­ble of when the fo­cus stays on the pitch. Good luck to the team!

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.