What a whirl­wind of awe­some sports it’s been since last Fri­day! And by “awe­some,” you know I’m not talk­ing about West In­dies crick­et or the T&T Crick­et Board – that would be like prais­ing a leaky faucet. But I’d be re­miss if I didn’t ded­i­cate at least the first part of this col­umn to the squad se­lect­ed for the up­com­ing Test se­ries against Aus­tralia. Be­cause, well, it’s al­ways a good laugh!

I’ve held my tongue on the ap­point­ment of 33-year-old Ros­ton Chase as cap­tain, but, with Shai Hope be­ing the on­ly oth­er vi­able can­di­date in the squad, it’s less a se­lec­tion and more a case of best/least ter­ri­ble op­tion avail­able. I can’t un­der­stand how Vin­cent­ian Jomel War­ri­can (al­so 33) could be named vice-cap­tain. I can on­ly as­sume King Sam­my (the es­teemed lone se­lec­tor, for those liv­ing un­der a crick­et-free rock) de­cid­ed War­ri­can was the best spin­ning op­tion, then flipped a coin to see if he’d get the vice-cap­tain­cy. Heads for War­ri­can, tails for... well, who knows? Maybe a ran­dom fan from the stands.

Chase, in par­tic­u­lar, will have to show some im­pres­sive per­for­mances with the bat to earn his keep on the side, as late­ly, his bat­ting at the Test lev­el has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, a far cry from his ini­tial promis­ing tons against In­dia when he first came in­to the Test are­na. Since then, it has been more down than up­hill from his 49 Tests and 90 in­nings. He has five hun­dreds (most of those came be­tween his de­but in 2016 to 2019) and 11 fifties at a pal­try bat­ting av­er­age of 26.33, while his bowl­ing av­er­age is 46. It would be good if those num­bers were the oth­er way around.

King Sam­my has gone for some ex­pe­ri­ence with the bat­ting line­up, and while I can ar­gue with the se­lec­tion, my re­al bone of con­tention is the puz­zling omis­sion of Joshua Da Sil­va. What on earth has this man done to of­fend the crick­et­ing deities? He was named vice-cap­tain of the team to tour Pak­istan and was prompt­ly dropped from the play­ing XI. He then came and played in the Re­gion­al Tour­na­ment, churned out three con­sec­u­tive hun­dreds, led the T&T Le­gions to the Break­out League cham­pi­onship, and now, he can’t even make the 16-man squad for an Aus­tralian Test se­ries. My on­ly log­i­cal con­clu­sion is that he must have ei­ther said some­thing wild­ly dis­re­spect­ful to King Sam­my or, per­haps, chal­lenged him to a dance-off and won.

Gone are the days when Desmond Haynes was the lead se­lec­tor and he would ex­plain why Play­er A was dropped and why Play­er B was se­lect­ed. I would even go fur­ther to sug­gest that there should have been a new pol­i­cy by the board in giv­ing the crick­et fans an in­sight as to how the teams were se­lect­ed. But take note, the King does not ap­pear to have to let the pub­lic know why cer­tain se­lec­tions were made. Long live the King while West In­dies crick­et­ing per­for­mances keep dy­ing over by over, sor­ry ball by sor­ry ball.

By the way, why did Nicholas Pooran re­tire from in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et at the ripe age of 29? While I thank him for his ser­vice, I won­der if there was some­thing be­hind the scenes that was both­er­ing him. What a pity!

But enough of crick­et’s nev­er-end­ing dread. Let’s piv­ot back to the tru­ly fab­u­lous week of sport. How many of you sat through the epic French Open fi­nal held at Roland Gar­ros in Paris be­tween Car­los Al­caraz and Jan­nik Sin­ner? If not, I high­ly rec­om­mend find­ing a spare 5 1⁄2 hours (yes, you read that right) and re­play­ing what was noth­ing short of a phe­nom­e­nal spec­ta­cle. I sug­gest­ed a while back that these two would rule the ten­nis cir­cuit in the years to come, just like when the big three, Roger Fed­er­er, Rafael Nadal and No­vak Djokovic ruled the ten­nis world for well over a decade. The fi­nal had every­thing you would have want­ed to see in a ten­nis match. The shots at times had me in awe, al­most say­ing “im­pos­si­ble!” What was al­so re­mark­able was the fit­ness lev­el of these play­ers, to be on court for that length of time and play­ing shot af­ter shot for 5 1⁄2 hours as if it were 5 1⁄2 min­utes! It was a spec­ta­cle to be­hold. The fi­nal pass­ing shot that Al­caraz played to win the match even had Sin­ner shak­ing his head. Wim­ble­don starts on June 30 and runs un­til Ju­ly 13. Don’t miss it. Even if it’s on­ly half as good as Roland Gar­ros, it’ll still be worth every sec­ond of your in­vest­ment.

Fi­nal­ly, a mas­sive, re­sound­ing THANK YOU to all the foot­ball fans in T&To, for the tremen­dous sup­port giv­en to the se­nior men’s na­tion­al foot­ball team at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on June 6. What an elec­tric at­mos­phere! I don’t be­lieve I have seen a crowd as large as that at the Sta­di­um since 2006. I sus­pect the St Kitts and Nevis team was so blown away by the sheer num­bers and vo­cal pas­sion that they for­got how to play. It cer­tain­ly gave the T&T team a colos­sal boost, and that 6-2 re­sound­ing vic­to­ry (es­pe­cial­ly af­ter be­ing tied 2-2 at half­time) was pure foot­balling mag­ic.

Go­ing on to Cos­ta Ri­ca was al­ways go­ing to be a chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly with their fa­mous­ly par­ti­san crowd. An ear­ly set­back be­fore the game start­ed was an in­jury to Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham, the cen­tral de­fend­er, which meant that coach Dwight Yorke had to do some fran­tic fid­dling with the line­up, but for the first 15 min­utes, our War­riors were tak­ing the game to Los Ticos like they owned the place. A cou­ple of de­fen­sive laps­es cost T&T two first-half goals, but like true War­riors, they roared back in the sec­ond, even­tu­al­ly los­ing a re­spectable 2-1. More im­por­tant­ly, they se­cured their space in the third round of Con­ca­caf’s FI­FA World Cup 2026 qual­i­fiers.

The draw has been made in Group one: Pana­ma, El Sal­vador, Guatemala and Suri­name. Group two: Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao, T&T and Bermu­da. Group three: Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras, Haiti and Nicaragua. The win­ner of each group goes straight to the World Cup, while the best two run­ners-up will ad­vance to the FI­FA in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play-off tour­na­ment sched­uled for March 2026.

The games in the group will be a home-and-away round-robin play, which will take place be­tween Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber. The draw has giv­en us an in­trigu­ing, all-Caribbean Group 2. We know what Ja­maica has to of­fer (a po­tent mix of speed and flair), so a sol­id strate­gic plan will be key to con­quer­ing them. Cu­ra­cao can be a dan­ger­ous op­po­nent with a high­ly qual­i­fied coach in Dick Ad­vo­caat and Bermu­da, the low­est-ranked team in the group, will fight for every ball as if their na­tion­al pride de­pends on it. The War­riors need to be pre­pared for a prop­er is­land bat­tle.

The most im­por­tant in­gre­di­ent for vic­to­ry would be YOU, the foot­ball fans of T&T. The Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um must be packed to its 25,000-voice ca­pac­i­ty, roar­ing and ap­plaud­ing every move and every goal for Dwight Yorke’s men. T&T must win all three home games; our sta­di­um needs to be­come an im­pen­e­tra­ble fortress where vis­it­ing teams are sim­ply over­whelmed by the sheer force of our red, white, and black sup­port, just like St Kitts and Nevis were.

The 2026 World Cup is beck­on­ing for the War­riors and the pop­u­la­tion of T&T. Twen­ty years af­ter Ger­many, it is no longer mis­sion im­pos­si­ble, it’s now mis­sion pos­si­ble!

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.