MAN­CHES­TER, Eng­land – Head coach Phil Sim­mons says West In­dies have shown great char­ac­ter over the first week of their quar­an­tine since ar­riv­ing here for next month’s three-Test se­ries against Eng­land.

Fast bowler Ke­mar Roach says that West In­dies fast bowl­ing is in good hands see­ing the young­sters who are on tour with him in Eng­land at the mo­ment.

There is much crit­i­cism of the de­ci­sion to re­place the elect­ed lead­er­ship of TTFA with a FI­FA nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee so ear­ly in its tenure. Crit­ics have ques­tioned the tim­ing and put for­ward all kinds of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as to why the Unit­ed TTFA team were al­lowed less than four months at the helm.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – For­mer in­ter­im West In­dies head coach Floyd Reifer says he is thrilled to be back in the Caribbean side’s coach­ing set-up, and is hop­ing he can con­tribute to an his­toric se­ries win over Eng­land next month.

The Jock­eys As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day held a meet­ing at San­ta Rosa Park, Ari­ma, un­der the guid­ance of pres­i­dent Shel­don Ro­dri­go. The meet­ing, which was well at­tend­ed al­though sev­er­al of the sea­soned cam­paign­ers were miss­ing, will con­tin­ue to­mor­row morn­ing.

West In­dies head coach Phil Sim­mons thinks that the cur­rent Black Lives Mat­ter (BLM) protest that is go­ing on around the world and which is very vivid in Eng­land can ac­tu­al­ly spur his side on when they meet Eng­land in the up­com­ing three-Test se­ries in Eng­land.

Sports and more­so foot­ball in many ways, as we know it now has be­come dif­fer­ent from how it used to be on­ly a few decades ago. Foot­ball has al­ways evolved. Gone are the mud­dy pitch­es, heavy leather balls and the 1-2-7 for­ma­tion of the game’s ori­gins in the 1870s. Mas­sive play­er and coach wages, high-tech train­ing com­plex­es and evolv­ing tac­tics are all in­flu­ences which have shaped the sport in re­cent years. But are there com­mon threads that we can see in the coach­ing of the game which still rings true? From past coach­es and play­ers who have made out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions, there have been philoso­phies and lessons the most suc­cess­ful and fa­mous in the his­to­ry of the game have had to pass on. The ques­tion re­mains, have we suf­fi­cient­ly tapped in­to this?

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Out­spo­ken fast bowl­ing leg­end Sir Andy Roberts has lament­ed the ex­clu­sion of fast bowler Os­hane Thomas from the West In­dies 14-man squad to Eng­land but has queried the in­clu­sion of out-of-form open­er Kraigg Brath­waite.

T&T se­nior foot­ballers Alvin Jones of Re­al Salt Lake FC and Min­neso­ta Unit­ed duo, Kevin Moli­no and Cana­di­an-born Gre­go­ry Ran­jits­ingh, will like­ly come up against each oth­er in the unique World Cup-style tour­na­ment fea­tur­ing all 26 US Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) card­ed to be­gin on Ju­ly 8.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Crick­et West In­dies’ chief se­lec­tor Roger Harp­er be­lieves not hav­ing to con­tend with Eng­land fans in next month’s Test se­ries could work to the ad­van­tage of the Caribbean men.

The gov­ern­ment of T&T and the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) are cur­rent­ly work­ing through the pro­to­cols to have the tour­na­ment staged en­tire­ly here.

The Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (Ten­nisTT) has shift­ed its fo­cus from youth to se­nior, a strate­gic move it be­lieves will po­si­tion the coun­try to be the re­gion­al hub for the sport in the Caribbean, and ini­ti­ate sports tourism.