Let us start this col­umn, per­haps some might say for a change, with some pos­i­tive and won­der­ful news. Big Nigel Paul thus far has won at least a bronze medal at the In­ter­na­tion­al Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion World Box­ing Cham­pi­onships in Bel­grade, Ser­bia.

Paul, a gi­ant of a man, fight­ing in the su­per heavy­weight +92kg (he stands at six feet, five inch­es and weighs 269 lbs) has cre­at­ed his­to­ry for Trinidad & To­ba­go and be­came the first box­er from the coun­try to medal at the World Box­ing Cham­pi­onships.

Speak­ing to Paul, one may won­der just how he is a box­er as he is very hum­ble and gives all the praise to his coach­es for his suc­cess. Ob­vi­ous­ly, when he steps in­to the ring, he be­comes a war­rior and his mild-man­nered ap­proach takes a back seat un­til the fight is over and he can cool down, re­lax and await his next as­sign­ment.

As Paul says, his coach­ing staff analy­ses his op­po­nents based on video footage and plans the strat­e­gy for the fights he car­ries out. At 32, Paul can still achieve his goals in the next few years. He rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the 2016 Rio Olympics but failed to make the cut for Tokyo 2020. You bet­ter be­lieve that he will be giv­ing his all to be on the plane to Paris 2024.

Like any sport­ing hero, let us con­grat­u­late Paul on his achieve­ments and what­ev­er hap­pens in his next fight, he has put T&T on the map, not on­ly in the world of sport but by giv­ing box­ing a boost in the coun­try. His per­for­mance can hope­ful­ly serve as a cat­a­lyst to in­spire a whole crop of young men who would want to take up the sport of box­ing. One can on­ly hope that the pow­ers that be as­sist this fine ath­lete go­ing for­ward to achieve his goals. Well done, Nigel!

In crick­et, the Su­per 12 games at the ICC T20 World Cup is near­ly at an end and by the time you read this, West In­dies will be play­ing their fourth match on Thurs­day (No­vem­ber 4) against Sri Lan­ka with their fi­nal en­counter against Aus­tralia to come this Sat­ur­day (No­vem­ber 6) from 6 am (TT time).

Be­fore the West In­dies meet Sri Lan­ka, Aus­tralia take on Bangladesh and the West In­dies will be hop­ing the Tigers can do them a favour and de­feat the Kan­ga­roos. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the odds are stacked heav­i­ly against Bangladesh win­ning for the first time in this Su­per 12 stage of the tour­na­ment. In their last en­counter, hav­ing been dis­missed for 84 two days ago against the South Africans, their con­fi­dence will be low and added to this mis­ery, their star play­er and most ac­com­plished all-rounder, Shak­ib Al Hasan, has gone back home with a ham­string in­jury.

Ad­vanc­ing to the se­mi-fi­nals af­ter los­ing their first two games was al­ways go­ing to be dif­fi­cult for the West In­dies as they had to hope oth­er re­sults went their way. So the per­mu­ta­tions read like this - if and all of this is a huge if - the West In­dies win their fi­nal two games, they will end up with six points. If the Aus­tralians lose their fi­nal two games, they end up with four points but if they win one, West In­dies will have to win against them by a huge mar­gin which will have to be worked out on the day of the game.

The oth­er team in the equa­tion is South Africa. They play Eng­land so if Eng­land plays a strong team and doesn’t rest some of their lead­ing play­ers, the Eng­lish can be ex­pect­ed to win again and the West In­dies will be hop­ing for a huge Eng­land vic­to­ry which would help bring the net run rate of the South Africans down.

The fi­nal stand­ings could read Eng­land on 10 points and South Africa, Aus­tralia and the West In­dies all on six points. It does look like the script from a Steven Spiel­berg movie and would make for won­der­ful view­ing. How­ev­er, re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, I don't ex­pect it to hap­pen but the old adage will al­ways ap­ply: crick­et is a game of glo­ri­ous un­cer­tain­ties. I am cer­tain that the most die-hard West In­di­an fans are hop­ing for that mir­a­cle that can squeeze the West In­dies in­to the se­mi-fi­nals.

In Group Two, Pak­istan has been tremen­dous. If there is one team in the world that can mim­ic the West In­dies, it is Pak­istan. To­day, they can play like world beat­ers, and to­mor­row, they strug­gle to beat the worst play­ing side in a tour­na­ment. But not this Pak­istan team. They have been re­mark­ably con­sis­tent and have been play­ing good crick­et for a while now.

Re­cent­ly in 2021, they won T20 se­ries against New Zealand, South Africa, Zim­bab­we, and the West In­dies. How­ev­er, they nar­row­ly lost 2-1 in Eng­land in a se­ries that could have gone ei­ther way. They are ex­treme­ly well-led by Babar Azam whose ap­proach is a no-non­sense at­ti­tude to the game and in Sha­heen Afri­di, who at 21, in my view, is the lead­ing fast bowler in the world to­day. He has every­thing - swing, pace, and a dead­ly york­er but this Pak­istan team pos­sess­es some fine all-round tal­ent. They will take some beat­ing and I re­al­ly fan­cy them to take the ti­tle.

On the oth­er hand, In­dia has been a dis­ap­point­ment thus far but the vic­to­ry against Afghanistan will give them some con­fi­dence for their fi­nal two games. Even with their vic­to­ry, they will still have to hope that Afghanistan de­feats New Zealand and then it be­comes a three-way tie and net run rate will come in­to ef­fect.

What about the pitch­es? In my opin­ion, they have not been great for the tour­na­ment. The teams that have bat­ted sec­ond so far have ac­count­ed for 14 of the 21 vic­to­ries in the tour­na­ment. Namib­ia (twice), Scot­land (twice), Sri Lan­ka, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan are the on­ly teams that have bat­ted sec­ond and lost. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, there seems to be a clear ad­van­tage for the teams that chase to­tals in this T20 World Cup. We have not con­sis­tent­ly seen to­tals in ex­cess of 190 runs.

Fac­tu­al­ly, In­dia, who were sent in to bat by Afghanistan, has the high­est to­tal of 210 for 2 so far in the tour­na­ment Afghanistan bat­ting first against Scot­land scored 190 for 4 fol­lowed by Pak­istan against Namib­ia with 189 for 2. T20 crick­et is all about fours and six­es but 140 to 150 runs seem to be a com­pet­i­tive to­tal when bat­ting first and un­for­tu­nate­ly, these pitch­es are not as bats­man friend­ly when com­pared to oth­er T20 pitch­es across the globe.

Let us hope when we get to the se­mi-fi­nal stage of the tour­na­ment, fans will see some ex­hil­a­rat­ing bat­ting, su­perb bowl­ing and out­stand­ing catch­ing and field­ing by ar­guably the four best teams of the tour­na­ment.

Last but by no means least, Shubh Di­vali, T&T. May this holy fes­ti­val bring light over dark­ness, good over evil and knowl­edge over ig­no­rance.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.