It’s be­come a de­light­ful dai­ly rit­u­al, hasn’t it? Un­fold­ing the Guardian, the aro­ma of cof­fee swirling, and dis­cov­er­ing yet an­oth­er Trinidad & To­ba­go ath­lete or team paint­ing the world red, white, and black. It’s like T&T’s ath­letes are on a mis­sion to en­sure a dull break­fast is nev­er an op­tion.

It start­ed with the T&T Red Force Women’s Di­vas win­ning the women’s re­gion­al four-day crick­et cham­pi­onship. Then, it was the turn of the un­der-17 men’s hock­ey team, who stick­han­dled their way to Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be held in Au­gust in Paraguay with a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry over Brazil in the fi­nal of the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment held in Bar­ba­dos.

Now it is the turn of cy­cling, as the Pan Amer­i­can Elite Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships took place in Asun­ción at the Paraguay Na­tion­al Olympic Cy­cling Velo­drome. Nicholas Paul, Njisane Phillip, and Ryan D’Abreau sprint­ed away from all com­ers in the team sprint event, tak­ing the gold medal. Phillip con­tin­ues to rep­re­sent T&T with dis­tinc­tion, hav­ing al­ready qual­i­fied for four Olympic Games. That’s not just ex­pe­ri­ence; that’s a cy­cling dy­nasty!

But the spot­light, as it of­ten does, finds Nicholas Paul – a blur of speed and pre­ci­sion on the track. This down-to-earth and hum­ble young gen­tle­man, as ground­ed as the wheels on his bike, con­tin­ues to be a force of na­ture and leads the charge with T&T’s cy­clists. He is a great ex­am­ple for the younger ones to fol­low, as he re­mains fo­cused on the job at hand.

Miss­ing out on the gold medal to Colom­bia’s Quin­tero in the Men’s Kerin Fi­nals must have stung like a bee. How­ev­er, he was able to chan­nel that dis­ap­point­ment in­to pure gold, mak­ing no mis­take in the men’s sprint fi­nal, tak­ing home the gold in two straight rides.

My on­ly wish is for Paul to go to the Olympics and some­how medal. It is go­ing to be ex­treme­ly tough, but he has the men­tal­i­ty and is fo­cused, and to­geth­er with his coach, they must know what is need­ed to get over the hur­dle of an Olympic gold medal. I wish him all the luck and con­tin­ued suc­cess.

The hard-work­ing Te­niel Camp­bell must have been ex­treme­ly proud to take gold in the gru­elling Women’s 25 km Points Race. It would have been even more pleas­ing for her, as she on­ly made a re­turn to in­door track cy­cling ear­li­er this year, fol­low­ing two years of com­pet­ing on the Eu­ro­pean cir­cuit. Her re­turn to in­door track cy­cling was noth­ing short of tri­umphant. Like Paul, she is a hard work­er, and hope­ful­ly she can im­prove as she works on her strat­e­gy.

I must con­grat­u­late the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion, as this coun­try’s cy­clists con­tin­ue to go about their busi­ness in a pro­fes­sion­al way. At the last An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, the en­tire Board was re-elect­ed un­op­posed, which speaks vol­umes. It’s a breath of fresh air and a re­fresh­ing change from the usu­al sport­ing squab­bles that have plagued T&T sports fed­er­a­tions for many years. They’re clear­ly do­ing some­thing right, so the mantra should be, “Keep ped­alling!”

Now, let’s shift gears to the per­plex­ing world of West In­dies crick­et lead­er­ship and to the re­cent an­nounce­ments by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI). I have not had a chance to com­ment on the an­nounce­ments of 1) the res­ig­na­tion of Kraigg Brath­waite as West In­dies Test cap­tain; 2) the re­moval of Rov­man Pow­ell as the West In­dies T20 cap­tain; and 3) the ap­point­ment of Shai Hope as the new T20 West In­dies cap­tain. It seems the cap­tain­cy carousel is mov­ing faster than a Michael Hold­ing bounc­er.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, I don’t know Kraigg Brath­waite ex­cept when I see him on TV be­ing in­ter­viewed. He seems to be an in­di­vid­ual who knows what he wants from his play­ers and how he wants them to per­form. I must al­so ad­mit I am not a fan of the for­mer West In­dies cap­tain.

He has played 98 Test match­es, and that is amaz­ing. I con­grat­u­late him on his longevi­ty, but I cer­tain­ly would not lose any sleep to go watch him bat. But his style is his style, and he is suc­cess­ful at it, though he would not bring many pay­ing cus­tomers through the turn­stiles.

How­ev­er, his job wasn’t to en­ter­tain the mass­es with flam­boy­ant strokes; it was to open the bat­ting and blunt the new ball, a task he per­formed with the tenac­i­ty of a sea­soned tor­toise as he did it for 189 in­nings, scor­ing 5,935 runs with 12 hun­dreds and 31 fifties with an av­er­age of 33.15. Look­ing at those fig­ures, he has done very well, even though in the last year, when the West In­dies need­ed him, he has fall­en away bad­ly.

While it is his style and it worked for him, his cap­tain­cy left me with a lot of pain and of­ten left me scratch­ing my head.

His tac­ti­cal ap­proach at times had me be­mused, and his ro­ta­tion of the bowlers left me dumb­found­ed. When he had the op­po­si­tion as pris­on­ers, seem­ing­ly on the ropes, they were of­ten al­lowed to stage Hou­di­ni-es­que es­capes and walk out of the jail’s front door. Many a time, the op­po­si­tion would have a noose around their neck, and he nev­er hunt­ed them down for the kill. The play­ers nev­er seemed mo­ti­vat­ed ex­cept for the home se­ries against Eng­land, the shock­ing vic­to­ry against Aus­tralia, the mag­nan­i­mous win against Pak­istan against all the odds, and the dou­ble hun­dred from Kyle My­ers that pro­pelled the West In­dies to vic­to­ry in Bangladesh.

The rest of the time, I re­signed my­self to a West In­di­an strug­gle. Eng­land last year was an em­bar­rass­ment for all the proud West In­di­ans liv­ing in Eng­land, and no one seemed to care ex­cept the Eng­lish fans who pitied the West In­di­an play­ers.

On the oth­er hand, what did Rov­man Pow­ell do? He steered the T20 ship from a dis­mal 8th to a re­spectable 3rd, a feat wor­thy of a medal, not a dis­missal. For Rov­man to be shown the door for that achieve­ment by CWI, through the head coach, the es­teemed Daren Sam­my, feels like be­ing re­ward­ed with a pink slip af­ter ac­ing an ex­am. I will not be sur­prised if he is not even in the fi­nal T20 eleven, but I would have pre­ferred Sam­my to be brave and say his per­for­mance as a play­er was not good enough for him to keep his place in the team.

The lack of a clear ex­pla­na­tion be­yond “We spoke; he un­der­stands” is about as sat­is­fy­ing as a dou­bles with­out pep­per sauce. On be­half of be­wil­dered fans, Rov­man, con­sid­er us apolo­getic.

On the sub­ject of Shai Hope, I have al­ways thought high­ly of him, and look­ing at him, his knowl­edge and how he analy­ses the game are ex­cel­lent. His calm de­meanour is per­fect for dis­sect­ing strate­gies, but one yearns to see that fire in his bel­ly trans­late to a fierce­ly mo­ti­vat­ed team on the field. I would like to see him hav­ing his play­ers on their toes and giv­ing the fans the im­pres­sion they want to die on the field for the West In­dies.

We need them play­ing like they’d rather eat grass than con­cede a run. There is no doubt he should lead the test team as well; he is the log­i­cal choice, as his crick­et­ing brain is ex­cel­lent, but, for the white ball game, he has to be more an­i­mat­ed. The prob­lem may be to try and con­vince Hope to come back in­to the test are­na.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, if Shai Hope says no to the cap­tain­cy of the Test team, then who? I don’t even know if Sam­my or CWI can an­swer that ques­tion, but let’s not for­get it’s West In­dies crick­et: is it a thrilling saga or a nev­er-end­ing hor­ror? Stay tuned, folks; the plot twists are al­ways just around the cor­ner.

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.