With the Mer­ry Monarch ready to rule the streets of Trinidad and To­ba­go in three days, I could eas­i­ly ded­i­cate this en­tire col­umn to Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val. For in­stance, how did those sup­pos­ed­ly es­teemed ca­lyp­so judges come up first­ly with the 40 Kaisosians to take part in the se­mi-fi­nals at Skin­ner Park, on­ly to ghost the most sea­soned Kaisosians when the Di­manche Gras fi­nals roll around at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sun­day night? It takes a rare tal­ent to look at a mas­ter­piece and say, "No thanks, I pre­fer the rough draft.”

Then we have the cu­ri­ous case of the "Stink and Dut­ty" fete, which re­cent­ly achieved the im­pos­si­ble by turn­ing the en­tire Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la in­to a sta­t­ic mon­u­ment of frus­tra­tion.

The re­sult­ing grid­lock was so leg­endary that 40 lo­cal busi­ness­es re­port­ed­ly chose to shut their doors rather than face the im­pend­ing wave of fête-in­duced paral­y­sis. If re­ports are true, the said busi­ness own­ers have de­cid­ed not to op­er­ate rather than face more se­vere in­con­ve­nience due to oth­er events planned in the penin­su­la be­fore the end of car­ni­val. My ques­tion is, how did the "Soa­ka" fete, which drew mas­sive crowds just two weeks pri­or, func­tion with­out turn­ing the West­ern Main Road in­to a scene from an apoc­a­lyp­tic thriller? Hav­ing at­tend­ed 99.9% of these events over the years as a spon­sor (a self­less sac­ri­fice for the cul­ture, I as­sure you), I can con­firm that, while Ch­aguara­mas has al­ways been a bot­tle­neck, I have nev­er seen it as bad as it was this past week­end; this was a to­tal sys­tem fail­ure. It is high time for a com­pre­hen­sive mas­ter plan where pro­mot­ers and stake­hold­ers ac­tu­al­ly speak the same lan­guage. Co­ex­is­tence shouldn't be a rad­i­cal con­cept; it has been the sta­tus quo for decades, and it’s to­tal­ly un­fair to those busi­ness­es that just want to keep their lights on.

Some good news is that most of the fetes have scored, even though, due to the rise in liquor prices, the ma­jor­i­ty of these all-in­clu­sive fetes have met their prof­itabil­i­ty bud­gets. Even though I hear Nin­ja’s pen­sion­ers' an­them, “Spend your mon­ey, bend your back, don’t let arthri­tis keep your back when you are danc­ing.” My prob­lem with the song, as most pen­sion­ers will tell you, is those first three words. Maybe the all-in­clu­sive fetes should have 3 prices: a VIP, a nor­mal price, and a pen­sion­er’s price, even though I know of one pen­sion­er who would eat every­thing and drink 3 bot­tles of cham­pagne just to get his mon­ey’s worth, but he is an ex­cep­tion to the rule.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the pro­mot­ers of Mon­day Mad­ness at the Oval. It was a fête with plen­ty of vibes. I have nev­er seen a crowd move to any­thing as they did; it was tru­ly a sight to be­hold, and it com­plete­ly show­cased our peo­ple as a hap­py na­tion and a fun-lov­ing par­ty na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly around car­ni­val time. An­oth­er very pos­i­tive event is Fla­va in the Sa­van­nah.

How great it is to see most of the top acts com­ing to adorn the stage to give the peo­ple a free con­cert. Then there were the mul­ti­tude of food stalls for the ‘small man’ to make some change.

Even though they are pay­ing rent, the venue caters to all types of food. The sur­round­ings are clean, and the po­lice pres­ence can be seen all around the event, hope­ful­ly keep­ing away the rogue el­e­ment. I un­der­stand the event will run un­til the end of Feb­ru­ary. If that is true, con­grat­u­la­tions to the NCC on a great ini­tia­tive.

While we are won­der­ing whether you have arthri­tis or not, sports around the world still have our at­ten­tion. The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup has start­ed with some in­ter­est­ing re­sults.

The ear­ly match­es saw the as­so­ciate mem­bers hold­ing their own and near­ly pulling off some shocks against the more es­tab­lished na­tions. The open­ing game saw Pak­istan edge the Nether­lands by 3 wick­ets with 3 balls to spare. Pak­istan were 114 for 7 chas­ing 148, and it seemed the first up­set of the tour­na­ment was on the cards. Thank­ful­ly, from a Pak­istan per­spec­tive, a 34-run un­de­feat­ed part­ner­ship be­tween Fa­heem Ashraf and Sha­heen Afri­di saw them home.

Then, there was Eng­land de­feat­ing Nepal by 4 runs, when it seemed hard­er for Eng­land to win the game than for Nepal to lose it. 10 runs to win in the fi­nal over, and Nepal on­ly man­aged 5, show­ing their in­ex­pe­ri­ence at this lev­el.

In­dia de­feat­ed the USA by 29 runs, and Sri Lan­ka got the bet­ter of Ire­land by 20 runs.

They have not been over­whelm­ing vic­to­ries by the more es­tab­lished na­tions; it ap­pears the as­so­ciate mem­ber na­tions are clos­ing the gap, which can on­ly be good for the game of crick­et, and it al­so sends a mes­sage to the full mem­ber na­tions to im­prove their game.

Thank­ful­ly, the West In­dies played a good all-round game against the Scots, win­ning in the end com­fort­ably by 35 runs. I don’t want to talk too fast, but Shim­ron Het­my­er bat­ting in the un­usu­al place at num­ber 3 seems to be back to his best. He had start­ed his ca­reer at that po­si­tion. Still, he was moved down the or­der, as the coach­es for the dif­fer­ent fran­chis­es must have felt he was a bet­ter fin­ish­er than go­ing at the top and con­trol­ling the in­nings. There was al­so the Nicholas Pooran fac­tor, as when he came in­to the team, he au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as­sumed the num­ber 3 role.

Most of the oth­er bats­men got a start, and they would have been a bit dis­ap­point­ed that they did not end the in­nings at 200. The bowl­ing was good, and the con­trol of Ro­mario Shep­herd was the best I have seen for a while. On­ly Akeal Ho­sein was giv­en some stick, go­ing for 13 an over in just 2 overs, but I ex­pect him to bounce back.

On Wednes­day, the re­al acid test ar­rived in the form of Eng­land. Af­ter the ear­ly loss of Shai Hope and Bran­don King—a start that had fans clutch­ing their heart med­ica­tion—the re­gion­al team showed some se­ri­ous spine to reach 196 for 5. Sher­fane Ruther­ford is cur­rent­ly in the kind of ex­cep­tion­al form that makes bowlers ques­tion their ca­reer choic­es; his "crack­er" of an in­nings was ex­act­ly the spark the team need­ed to turn a ner­vous start in­to a dom­i­nant to­tal.

While 196 is for­mi­da­ble, the pitch was a "bat­ter’s par­adise", mean­ing the bowl­ing had to be noth­ing short of clin­i­cal. In re­cent se­ries, the bowl­ing has of­ten been the Achilles' heel, but as I’ve long sus­pect­ed, the spin­ners are the ones hold­ing the keys to the king­dom. Gu­dakesh Motie, Akeal Ho­sein, and Ros­ton Chase didn't just bowl; they per­formed a mas­ter­class in con­tain­ment. What a vic­to­ry! It was the kind of per­for­mance that gives you the au­dac­i­ty to be­lieve the West In­dies can ac­tu­al­ly go all the way. Hope­ful­ly, this will give the West In­dies the con­fi­dence to go to the fi­nal in the tour­na­ment. If there is a fly in the oint­ment, how­ev­er, it’s the on­go­ing, awk­ward re­la­tion­ship with leg spin. It was a bit of a blow to the ego to see Nepal treat Adil Rashid like a lo­cal club bowler while the re­gion­al boys strug­gled to read him. We must hunt down every leg spin­ner in the re­gion and park them in the nets un­til the bats­men can play the goo­gly in their sleep. We sim­ply can­not al­low "mys­tery spin" to re­main a mys­tery to the West In­dies for­ev­er.

If I were a bet­ting man—and dur­ing Car­ni­val, we all are—I would ex­pect In­dia and Pak­istan to emerge from Group A, with Aus­tralia and Sri Lan­ka tak­ing Group B. In the re­main­ing brack­ets, I’m putting my mon­ey on New Zealand and South Africa, along­side our very own West In­dies and Eng­land. Time will tell if these pre­dic­tions are as shaky as all of us will be on Ash Wednes­day, but for now, the stage is set. Have a safe and spec­tac­u­lar Car­ni­val, T&T!

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.