To­day is the long-await­ed Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) fi­nal and af­ter 32 match­es, on­ly two teams re­main stand­ing - the favourites Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR), and the St Lu­cia Zouks (SLZ). Many of you would have pre­dict­ed TKR to reach this far but who would have cho­sen SLZ to get this far? Cer­tain­ly not me.

I owe skip­per Daren Sam­my a huge apol­o­gy as I did not even have his team get­ting out of the pre­lim­i­nary stage. But boy has he led this team well; they play for one an­oth­er and they fight down to the wire. When one looks through the team, there are no out­stand­ing stars and be­fore the tour­na­ment start­ed they lost Chris Gayle which, in the end, may well have worked in their favour as there are no pri­ma don­nas in this team. They have proven to be well or­gan­ised, tac­ti­cal­ly sound and are great to watch.

The two semi­fi­nal match-ups were dis­ap­point­ing games as the Ja­maica Tallawahs (JT) is just so in­con­sis­tent that you nev­er know what to ex­pect from them and play­ing against the well-oiled TKR, they were des­tined to come out sec­ond best.

Bat­ting wise, the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome on Glenn Phillips and An­dre Rus­sell is too much to bear and if they both fail, the team does not have an­oth­er two or three bats­men who will stand up to be count­ed. In short, they have big names but poor per­for­mances.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, I felt ex­treme­ly sor­ry for Rus­sell. He went in to bat with the score on 63 for 5 in the 12th over and had to score runs quick­ly if the JT were to get a com­pet­i­tive score. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he was on the re­ceiv­ing end of an aw­ful de­ci­sion and was giv­en out caught off of his pads in the 14th over with the score on 68.

His emo­tions sad­ly got the bet­ter of him and he was vis­i­bly an­gry and may well have to an­swer for his be­hav­iour. But, this or­deal could have eas­i­ly been avoid­ed had there been the De­ci­sion Re­view Sys­tem (DRS) in place. Why af­ter all these years does the CPL still not have DRS? Sure­ly if we have the tech­nol­o­gy, it is there to as­sist the um­pires and Rus­sell would have ap­pealed the de­ci­sion and con­tin­ued to bat. Come on CPL of­fi­cials, we must use the tech­nol­o­gy for the sake of the play­ers and the tour­na­ment.

The oth­er los­ing se­mi-fi­nal­ist, the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (GAW), with a sup­pos­ed­ly pow­er­ful bat­ting line-up were a dis­as­ter bowled out for 55. Yet an­oth­er year with­out win­ning the ti­tle. I am not so naive this time to stick my head out to pre­dict a win­ner as the SLZ are rid­ing high at the mo­ment and the TKR must guard against com­pla­cen­cy as the Zouks are a con­fi­dent team.

Next week, I will give my thoughts on all the teams of the tour­na­ment as a whole but thus far, it has been a well-or­gan­ised tour­na­ment, in­ci­dent-free and most im­por­tant­ly sport, es­pe­cial­ly live crick­et, was back on the tele­vi­sion and across the air­waves.

On the top­ic of sport back on tele­vi­sion, what a week we have had in ad­di­tion to the CPL; Eng­land played Aus­tralia in a T20 se­ries; NBA bas­ket­ball; the UE­FA Na­tions League and the US Open ten­nis cham­pi­onships are near­ing com­ple­tion.

In the US Open, just like Rus­sell, an­oth­er su­per­star let their emo­tions get the bet­ter of them as No­vak Djokovic was de­fault­ed out of the tour­na­ment af­ter hav­ing struck a line judge in the throat with the ball by ac­ci­dent when his serve was bro­ken. It was in­deed un­for­tu­nate but it is a les­son all world su­per­stars must learn - to con­trol their emo­tions.

Un­like in Rus­sell’s case, Djokovic had no­body but him­self to blame. What was even more star­tling is in the af­ter­math of the in­ci­dent, the line judge has been sub­ject­ed to ab­hor­rent abuse on so­cial me­dia af­ter a Ser­bian news­pa­per pub­lished her so­cial me­dia user­names. She had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the de­fault of Djokovic and I feel re­al­ly sor­ry for her.

Turn­ing to a brighter note, this week­end my favourite foot­ball league, and I am sure that of many fel­low Trin­bag­o­ni­ans is back up and run­ning on our screens - the Eng­lish Pre­mier League. It is in­deed won­der­ful to say that Liv­er­pool will be de­fend­ing their Pre­mier League ti­tle. This year promis­es to be close and ex­cit­ing but dear me, it is dif­fi­cult to pre­dict.

Last sea­son, Liv­er­pool waltzed away with the ti­tle by March even though COVID-19 had threat­ened to spoil the An­field par­ty. I ex­pect Man­ches­ter City to be chal­leng­ing again as their man­ag­er Pep Guardi­o­la hates to fin­ish sec­ond best. Chelsea has gone in­to the trans­fer mar­ket and ba­si­cal­ly bought a whole new squad as they are ea­ger for suc­cess.

Man­ches­ter Unit­ed fin­ished strong­ly last year and have bought a cou­ple of play­ers to sus­tain their chal­lenge for the top four. Ar­se­nal and Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur should fare bet­ter this sea­son as both their man­agers would have learnt not on­ly from their mis­takes last sea­son, but they would now know the strengths and weak­ness­es of their squads.

The fore­go­ing teams, as I see it, are the top six but there is al­ways a fly in the oint­ment - Leices­ter City back in 2016, Wolver­hamp­ton Wan­der­ers in 2019 and Sheffield Unit­ed in 2020. Could it be new­ly pro­mot­ed Leeds Unit­ed or Car­los An­celot­ti’s Ever­ton? What about the rel­e­ga­tion scrap? Can all three pro­mot­ed clubs stay up? What about those who es­caped the drop last sea­son: As­ton Vil­la, West Ham and Brighton? Will they be there again fight­ing the drop?

It promis­es to be an­oth­er jam-packed Eu­ro­pean sea­son with Spain’s La Liga al­so start­ing this week­end and Italy’s Se­rie A, a week lat­er. Some clubs have sug­gest­ed they may let up to 3,000 spec­ta­tors in their venues by Oc­to­ber which is en­cour­ag­ing. Let's keep our fin­gers crossed and hope that when foot­ball re­sumes, it will be safe and in­ci­dent-free. En­joy the view­ing, fel­low sports fa­nat­ics!

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