The dream is of­fi­cial­ly on ice. It was a glo­ri­ous, al­beit ul­ti­mate­ly heart­break­ing, run by the Trinidad and To­ba­go se­nior men’s na­tion­al foot­ball team in their 2026 FI­FA World Cup quest. A run so good, in fact, that it held the na­tion's in­ter­est right up un­til the penul­ti­mate round of games.

Be­fore the fi­nal qual­i­fi­ca­tion round be­gan, the con­sen­sus was that T&T had lit­tle to no chance of mak­ing the World Cup, as Ja­maica and Cu­raçao, we were told, would sim­ply be too much; and even though the team was drawn in what was termed the eas­i­est group, many felt Ja­maica and Cu­raçao were too much to han­dle, and like Bermu­da, T&T was, in the opin­ion of the pun­dits, mere­ly the fod­der—a small in­gre­di­ent in a foot­balling stew.

Coach Dwight Yorke, how­ev­er, was clear­ly cook­ing a dif­fer­ent recipe. He and his back­room staff qui­et­ly built a squad that he promised would not just com­pete, but gen­uine­ly trou­ble the best. And trou­ble them they did. The word I'm strug­gling with is not "trou­ble," but "un­lucky" or "un­for­tu­nate" to not se­cure out­right vic­to­ries against both Cu­raçao and Ja­maica at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. The one is­sue I think we will all agree on is that T&T did not put away the chances that were cre­at­ed in the games.

Against the top two, that was the grand canyon be­tween a re­spectable draw and a tri­umphant vic­to­ry. So, a heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions to Cu­raçao on be­com­ing the small­est na­tion to qual­i­fy for the World Cup. A tru­ly mon­u­men­tal achieve­ment. And best of luck to Ja­maica in the In­ter-Con­fed­er­a­tion play­offs—may their good for­tune hold!

Shift­ing fo­cus with­in the re­gion, con­grat­u­la­tions are al­so due to Pana­ma, which surged to the top of their Group A, edg­ing out the sur­prise pack­age, Suri­name, which will pro­ceed to the play­offs. Suri­name's per­for­mance was a de­light­ful shock, leav­ing a be­wil­dered Guatemala, which beat them 3-1 on the fi­nal night, and at one point looked set to win Group A, to pon­der where it all went wrong.

In Group C, we must tip our hats to Haiti, which qual­i­fied for their sec­ond World Cup since 1974, win­ning a group that had Cos­ta Ri­ca’s name all over it. Those of you old enough to re­mem­ber the fi­nal round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion on De­cem­ber 4, 1973, where T&T’s dreams were not just dashed, but quite spec­tac­u­lar­ly con­fis­cat­ed. T&T lost the game to Haiti 2-1 af­ter be­ing de­nied five goals, and af­ter the match, the ref­er­ee and one as­sis­tant ref­er­ee were sus­pend­ed, nev­er to ref­er­ee an­oth­er game. Thank­ful­ly, Haiti's vic­to­ry this time was con­tro­ver­sy-free. Good luck to them!

The biggest earth­quake in the re­gion, how­ev­er, was the calami­tous elim­i­na­tion of Cos­ta Ri­ca. Fin­ish­ing a dis­tant third, it's safe to say the en­tire na­tion of Cos­ta Ri­ca is in mourn­ing, as no one could have pre­dict­ed such a spec­tac­u­lar col­lapse.

Be­fore leav­ing the pitch, a stand­ing ova­tion for the T&T fans. You were noth­ing short of mag­nif­i­cent. Home games saw crowds of 20,000 and 18,000, and even the Bermu­da game drew over 7,000. That pas­sion is the re­al en­gine of change. Keep the faith, keep be­liev­ing, and re­mem­ber: the jour­ney was ex­cit­ing, and the next one starts to­mor­row.

Shift­ing gears now, there is so much in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et go­ing on around the globe, but let’s be­gin with the West In­dies, who we know are in New Zealand, fight­ing the Ki­wis. They have lost both the T20 and ODI se­ries, but in a small act of de­fi­ance, they’ve made a fight of it. Out­side of the fifth T20 ham­mer­ing, which the hosts won com­fort­ably, all oth­er games were nail-biters, lost by sin­gle-dig­it mar­gins, and could have gone ei­ther way. The West In­dies are not win­ning, but at least they are los­ing stub­born­ly, with a fight. That’s all fans could have ever asked for.

The bat­ting con­tin­ues to re­volve around the steady hands of Shai Hope, but I like what I see of young Ac­k­eem Au­guste. He is def­i­nite­ly one for the fu­ture, and I hope he plays in all the for­mats, as the more crick­et he plays at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, the bet­ter he will get. What a pity he has been left out of the test squad; nev­er­the­less, he will learn that he has to work hard and be dis­ci­plined. If the el­e­va­tor to suc­cess is out of or­der, you have to use the stairs.

Vet­er­an Ke­mar Roach is back due to the in­juries of the Josephs (Alzarri and Shamar), and his ex­pe­ri­ence and abil­i­ty to make the ball talk on New Zealand pitch­es will be in­valu­able to the oth­er bowlers. Kavem Hodge's re­call feels like a last-chance sa­loon; he must now im­press or for­ev­er hold his peace. I will wait for the fi­nal ODI and the Test se­ries be­fore I pass judg­ment on the tour, but even though the West In­dies have lost five out of sev­en, at least they went down swing­ing. The fight, I will grant them, is there.

The biggest show in crick­et, the Ash­es, start­ed on Thurs­day night East­ern Caribbean time, and the re­al ques­tion has to be, can Eng­land con­quer the Aus­tralian fortress? Tra­di­tion­al­ly, de­feat­ing Aus­tralia in their back­yard is as easy as ex­plain­ing quan­tum physics to a house cat. Yet, the Eng­lish press—ever keen to ig­nite a fire—have open­ly de­clared this cur­rent Aus­tralian squad as the "worst Aus­tralian team for a long time"; strong words in­deed. The dan­ger, of course, is that you don't awak­en a sleep­ing gi­ant. The Aus­tralian squad is an age­ing one, with the av­er­age age of 33.1 years, but they still have tremen­dous abil­i­ty and qual­i­ty.

Go­ing through the squad, this isn't a team; it’s a col­lec­tion of sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als who have seen more crick­et than most peo­ple have seen sun­ris­es. Steve Smith (36) is lead­ing the charge with Pat Cum­mins side­lined. Every key play­er is over 30, save the youth­ful Cameron Green (26), with the bowl­ing at­tack com­pris­ing Nathan Ly­on (38), Mitchell Starc (35), Scott Boland (36), and debu­tant Bren­dan Doggett (31). The bats­men are al­so all in their 30s, led by Smith, Travis Head, with Mar­nus Labuschagne and Green mak­ing up their mid­dle or­der. Can this vet­er­an squad han­dle the sheer, gru­elling rigours of five Test match­es over six weeks? If any team can do it, the Aussies can. I cer­tain­ly won’t be writ­ing off a squad where every­one over 30 can still be a match-win­ner; they have more tricks up their sleeve than a ma­gi­cian. Cum­mins should be back for the sec­ond Test, so they’ll soon be back at full strength.

The Eng­lish, led by the ag­gres­sive Ben Stokes, are a tal­ent­ed, well-oiled ma­chine run­ning on the 'Bazball' phi­los­o­phy. Joe Root is the an­chor, and the ex­plo­sive Har­ry Brook is a thrill to watch. If the open­ing pair, Zak Craw­ley and Ben Duck­ett, can sim­ply get them off to a start, their bowl­ing at­tack—fea­tur­ing a fit Mark Wood and the smooth, men­ac­ing Jofra Archer—can cer­tain­ly cause chaos. It will be a tight se­ries, a true bat­tle, but play­ing at home, I have to give the men from ‘Down Un­der’ the slight ad­van­tage. They sim­ply know their own back­yard too well.

Fi­nal­ly, to In­dia, where South Africa pulled off a shock­ing up­set in the first Test, dis­miss­ing the mighty In­di­an team for a pal­try 93 while chas­ing a tar­get of 123. The Test last­ed a mere two and a half days on a pitch that turned so much, it gave every­one whiplash, as no team man­aged to score 200. No doubt the pride of In­dia must be hurt­ing right now, a wound made worse by the in­jury to cap­tain Shub­man Gill. They will now be des­per­ate to lev­el the se­ries. It will be fas­ci­nat­ing to see what kind of pitch they pre­pare for the sec­ond Test—the kind that as­sists spin, or the kind that as­sists win­ning? The South Africans, how­ev­er, have demon­strat­ed they have the play­ers for all oc­ca­sions.

Three ex­cit­ing Test se­ries beck­on, and yes, I am ab­solute­ly in­clud­ing the West In­dies in that line­up. Let's hope they can turn the tide in the Test se­ries against the Ki­wis and se­cure some much-need­ed points in the World Test Cham­pi­onship.

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.