En­dem­ic cor­rup­tion. En­dem­ic im­puni­ty. Emp­ty promis­es. There is no ac­count­abil­i­ty. There is a men­tal­i­ty that peo­ple can do what­ev­er they want, in­clud­ing mis­man­ag­ing and es­sen­tial­ly em­bez­zling pub­lic funds. Crit­i­cisms and ac­cu­sa­tions of fraud, mis­man­age­ment, and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds have plagued lo­cal sports for years; ac­count­abil­i­ty cam­paigns de­mand­ing an­swers to the where­abouts of mil­lions of dol­lars go un­heed­ed and un­pun­ished. Cor­po­rate spon­sors have called for ac­count­abil­i­ty, and in the ab­sence of any se­ri­ous ef­fort to ad­dress their con­cerns, they sim­ply walk away. Lost in the cul­ture of “sweep it un­der the car­pet” and ride out the im­me­di­ate out­rage is the idea of “Pe­ter pay­ing for Paul.” Paul pays for all sce­nar­ios. The sport or­ga­ni­za­tions that are metic­u­lous about do­ing the right thing and prop­er­ly ac­count­ing pay the price. They strug­gle to get or re­tain spon­sors. Even at the lev­el of the Min­istry of Sport and Sport Com­pa­ny, the small fry car­ry the bur­den. The big guns ap­pear to get away with mur­der and still get fund­ing. The play­ing field is not lev­el.

BRIS­TOL Eng­land – West In­dies Women’s head coach Shane Deitz has warned his side against com­pla­cen­cy af­ter their un­beat­en start to the ICC Women’s T20 Crick­et World Cup.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Head coach Daren Sam­my has re­vealed that bat­ting for long pe­ri­ods of time was one of the main talk­ing points of the West In­dies’ train­ing camp ahead of the start of their two-match Test se­ries against Sri Lan­ka.

Since the end of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a dis­tinct week­end rit­u­al has tak­en hold across Trinidad and To­ba­go. From Ari­ma to Cou­va to the board­walk in Ch­aguara­mas and oth­er parts of Trinidad, the ex­plo­sion of 5K road races has be­come a sta­ple of lo­cal fit­ness cul­ture. Dri­ven by cor­po­rate spon­sor­ships, so­cial and health is­sues, and the dopamine hit of a fin­ish­er’s medal, these events have gal­va­nized thou­sands of cit­i­zens to step out and move. This thriv­ing race scene demon­strates a pow­er­ful, col­lec­tive de­sire for well­ness across our twin-is­land re­pub­lic. Yet, look past the en­er­gy of race-day self­ies, and a stark para­dox emerges: our na­tion­al health met­rics for Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases are wor­ry­ing.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Pac­ers Nial Smith and Alzarri Joseph ran through Sri Lan­ka’s bat­ting line­up to lead a West In­dies Se­lect XI to an un­be­liev­able 15-run come­back vic­to­ry at the Coolidge Crick­et Ground here on Sun­day.

BRIS­TOL, Eng­land – West In­dies Women’s skip­per Hay­ley Matthews turned in her best-ever bowl­ing fig­ures at a World Cup to set up her side’s com­fort­able five-wick­et vic­to­ry over Sri Lan­ka on Sun­day and re­main un­beat­en at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.

This has per­haps been one of the most pul­sat­ing starts to a World Cup in re­cent mem­o­ry and cer­tain­ly one of the best by a host na­tion and a Con­ca­caf rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the US team. The tem­po has been re­lent­less, the match­es have been com­pet­i­tive, and the in­ten­si­ty is strik­ing from the very first whis­tle.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – An­oth­er dis­mal bat­ting per­for­mance by a West In­dies Se­lect XI has left Sri Lan­ka on the verge of com­plet­ing vic­to­ry in their four-day warmup match at Coolidge Crick­et Ground at the end of the penul­ti­mate day on Sat­ur­day.

There is no short­age of in­ter­na­tion­al cognoscen­ti of­fer­ing World Cup analy­sis for tour­na­ment fol­low­ers to wade through so you do not need mine. I will state the ob­vi­ous, though - 2026 is the most com­mer­cial­ized, mon­e­tized and politi­cized World Cup ever. If you are lucky, you have ac­cess to a paid stream­ing ser­vice, a visa to en­ter one of the host coun­tries, or a high priced tick­et to watch a match live. If not, FI­FA has adopt­ed a Pon­tius Pi­late stance and washed its hands of you and your prob­lems. FI­FA claims “foot­ball unites the world and brings peo­ple to­geth­er to cel­e­brate the beau­ti­ful game”. But in 2026, World Cup foot­ball - which should be freely avail­able to or­di­nary work­ing peo­ple via pub­lic tele­vi­sion, easy en­try in­to host coun­tries and rea­son­ably priced tick­ets - is now a com­mod­i­ty with re­strict­ed ac­cess.

​The let­ter “A” has be­come syn­ony­mous with suc­cess and pro­gres­sion over the last few weeks–even more so than be­fore.

LEEDS, Eng­land – West In­dies Women dug deep to snatch vic­to­ry from the jaws of de­feat against Scot­land Women and im­prove their chances of se­cur­ing a semi­fi­nal berth in the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup with a thrilling sev­en-run vic­to­ry on Thurs­day.

Dubai, UAE – Desert Vipers head coach Azhar Mah­mood has is­sued a de­fi­ant ral­ly­ing cry, in­sist­ing his side can con­quer the Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana Glob­al Su­per League even af­ter be­ing dealt a ma­jor blow with the loss of cap­tain Chris Green.