So much is go­ing on in the world of sport that the feel­ing of be­ing spoiled for choice may seem bor­der­line ridicu­lous. From ath­let­ics, ten­nis, crick­et, golf and foot­ball - the FI­FA World Cup 2022 qual­i­fy­ing games around the world and the Eu­ro Cham­pi­onships get go­ing to­mor­row. To top it all off, at 10:00 am (East­ern Caribbean time) to­day, West In­dies take on South Africa in the first test match at the Daren Sam­my Na­tion­al Crick­et Sta­di­um (pre­vi­ous­ly known as Beause­jour Crick­et Ground) in St. Lu­cia - one of my favourite grounds in the Caribbean. Quite lit­er­al­ly, sport is on non-stop and so with the lock­down and cur­few in T&T, sports fans must be thrilled and may not think of a bet­ter way to spend their time than watch­ing their favourite sports.

Let’s kick off with World Cup qual­i­fy­ing and as some­one men­tioned to me, Trinidad and To­ba­go qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2022 FI­FA World Cup end­ed be­fore it start­ed. T&T did not get out of the first round. One of the dark­est days in the his­to­ry of the sport, far less foot­ball in the coun­try.

St Kitts & Nevis (who won the group) per­formed with heart, de­ter­mi­na­tion and ex­hib­it­ed their fight­ing qual­i­ties, some­thing I thought T&T woe­ful­ly lacked in the games they played. Even though de­feat­ing Guyana 3-0 looked good on pa­per, T&T did not ex­hib­it the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a well-oiled ma­chine but it was the on­ly game in which the team grind­ed out a vic­to­ry and the best teams when they are not play­ing well, it is their de­ter­mi­na­tion and fight that shines through.

Draw­ing with Puer­to Ri­co af­ter tak­ing the lead against the run of play, one would have hoped for a sim­i­lar fight­ing, plucky de­fen­sive per­for­mance en­sur­ing the Puer­to Ri­cans did not equalise and if T&T had to win ug­ly by 1-0, the im­por­tant sce­nario was the three points. That was a mi­nor set­back I thought and with the Ba­hamas next, who con­ced­ed sev­en goals three days be­fore T&T was up against them, it meant that St Kitts & Nevis match would have been the ul­ti­mate de­cider. The Ba­hami­ans made three changes to the team that was hit for more than half a dozen yet the T&T team, who knew full well the im­por­tance of this match, could not get the ball in­to their op­po­nent’s net.

With that draw, T&T waved bye-bye un­til the next World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign comes around in an­oth­er four years. Ex­pect­ed­ly, the blame game quick­ly be­gan. The play­ers were thrown un­der the bus by the coach for squan­der­ing chances, and they prob­a­bly did, but the fact re­mains - they could not score a goal against a team that con­ced­ed sev­en goals three days be­fore plus an­oth­er eight in their two pre­vi­ous games. What a dis­as­ter of ti­tan­ic pro­por­tions! Even the hol­low vic­to­ry in what looked like a prac­tice match against a St Kitts and Nevis team in their fi­nal game of the round can’t rem­e­dy the dis­as­ter.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the coach can say what he wants but ul­ti­mate­ly, he is the one in charge; he is the one who makes de­ci­sions; he is the one who picks the team; he is the one who plans the tac­tics; he is the one who looks at the op­po­si­tion and stops them from play­ing; he is the one who mo­ti­vates the team and the buck stops with him. Ask the host of man­agers in the top leagues through­out the world, when re­sults do not go their way, do the play­ers get fired? No. But we have seen top man­agers part com­pa­ny with clubs. Coach­es are hired to do a spe­cif­ic job and the job of T&T’s coach was to get the team in­to the next round of World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion and he failed. In­deed, it is a pity but now is the time to move on.

Foot­ball in this coun­try re­quires a com­plete over­haul so what has tran­spired on the field is be­ing mir­rored off the field. The con­stant bick­er­ing and fight­ing among the stake­hold­ers will nev­er stop. There are peo­ple who are in­volved in foot­ball that seek their own self-in­ter­est. In oth­er words, what can they get out of foot­ball? Few do it for the love of the beau­ti­ful game and the love of coun­try. T&T’s young foot­ballers are suf­fer­ing. They don’t know what the next step is and where prop­er train­ing and de­vel­op­ment will be com­ing from. Those charged with han­dling foot­ball in T&T should be look­ing at the next crop of young peo­ple to de­vel­op them for 2026 (which may be too soon) but some ef­fort cer­tain­ly has to be made.

I await the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee’s post mortem on T&T’s failed World Cup cam­paign. It should make for in­ter­est­ing read­ing but please, don’t wait with bat­ed breath.

<South Africa vs West In­dies, we ready>

On to per­haps more pleas­ant mat­ters, the first test be­tween West In­dies and South Africa be­gins to­day and many crick­et fans in the re­gion are look­ing for­ward to it with ea­ger an­tic­i­pa­tion. Fans have asked me to name my fi­nal start­ing eleven for the West In­dies and I am leav­ing out Kier­an Pow­ell and Ros­ton Chase. West In­dies, once again, have to get 20 wick­ets in the game and to do that, the team must go in­to the test with five bowlers and must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that they would have a young rook­ie in Jay­den Seales, should he be se­lect­ed. I sin­cere­ly hope the se­lec­tors are brave enough to go with Seales. He is such a fine prospect and pleas­es, to the skep­tics out there, don’t tell me he is too young. Do you re­mem­ber a young man by the name of Michael Hold­ing go­ing to Aus­tralia as a 19-year-old hav­ing played a hand­ful of first-class games? I would un­leash Seales against the Pro­teas and give him 5-over spells and tell him to bowl as fast as he can as their bat­ting line­up is not as for­mi­da­ble as it was a few years ago. No AB de Vil­liers, Hashim Am­la or Faf du Plessis so their bowl­ing ap­pears to be their strength.

Shai Hope has forced his way in­to the team with good scores and the rest of the team picks it­self. The big ques­tion is will the West In­dies se­lec­tors be bold to go in­to the test with Ja­son Hold­er bat­ting at num­ber six against the likes of Kag­iso Raba­da, Lun­gi Ngi­di, An­rich Nort­je etc.? To win, West In­dies has no oth­er op­tion.

It is an­oth­er huge test for skip­per Kraigg Brath­waite both from his lead­er­ship qual­i­ties and get­ting big scores with his bat. The oth­er rook­ie test bats­men - Nkrumah Bon­ner and Kyle May­ers - will face a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge from the South African bowlers as it will be pace and seam to un­set­tle them. But so far they have shown ex­cel­lent tem­pera­ment at test lev­el.

I ex­pect the test se­ries to be tough but this re­newed fight­ing spir­it West In­dies fans have seen in re­cent times from their team may very well shine through once again.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.