The good news - the West In­dies have won the T20 se­ries against the mighty Aus­tralians. I did say they are not as mighty as one would have thought as they are miss­ing a num­ber of their star T20 per­form­ers how­ev­er, a win is a win.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the West In­dies se­lec­tors are still ex­per­i­ment­ing with their T20 best eleven. Some play­ers were al­lowed to rest and oth­ers are nurs­ing mi­nor in­juries so it al­lowed the Aussies to win game 4. In the end, it turned out to be a cliffhang­er as An­dre Rus­sell and Fabi­an Allen need­ed 36 off the last 2 overs and when 25 runs came from the first 5 balls in over num­ber 19, mis­sion im­pos­si­ble seemed high­ly prob­a­ble. But, Allen was dis­missed with the fi­nal ball of the over and Mitchell Starc pro­duced a quite out­stand­ing over to de­ny Rus­sell the 11 runs need­ed to se­cure a West In­dies vic­to­ry.

Some fans were up­set that Rus­sell did not run a sin­gle off the first ball which would have meant Starc would have had to be bowl­ing to the left-hand­ed Hay­den Walsh Jr. so his line would have had to change and bowl­ing to Walsh could have up­set his rhythm. Nonethe­less, any­one would have backed Rus­sell to get those 11 runs. I found Starc’s per­for­mance to be sim­ply su­perb.

West In­dies have in fact played some good crick­et. I did say when Chris Gayle makes runs, I would raise my glass to him which I cer­tain­ly did and I was hap­py for him but I have not changed my view that a younger play­er should be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty. Again, I ask the ques­tion: where is Dar­ren Bra­vo? Is he in­jured? It would have been ide­al with him com­ing in to bat in game 4 at num­ber 4 when Adam Zam­pa was bowl­ing well and had the West In­dies bats­men in trou­ble with his leg-spin. Few bats­men in the re­gion play spin as well as Dar­ren Bra­vo and we have seen the West In­dies bats­men strug­gle against the spin bowlers, es­pe­cial­ly in the se­ries against South Africa.

It ap­pears the West In­dies se­lec­tors have made up their minds that this will be the squad for the T20 World Cup. I am hop­ing it is not so as there is still a game to play against the Aussies and Pak­istan ar­rives in the re­gion to play five T20 in­ter­na­tion­als be­gin­ning on Ju­ly 27. Then, in Au­gust, the CPL bowls off so there is am­ple time for oth­er play­ers to ad­dress the se­lec­tors.

The bowl­ing de­part­ment seems to have set­tled down with both young Walsh and Obed Mc­Coy bowl­ing well. Dwayne Bra­vo seems to be en­joy­ing his crick­et and is an as­set with his bowl­ing at the death. Rus­sell has the ex­pe­ri­ence to up his game but Shel­don Cot­trell needs to be more con­sis­tent to com­mand a reg­u­lar place in the team. That be­ing said, an ex­cit­ing few months are ahead with T20 crick­et.

In foot­ball, it was a Sun­day night to re­mem­ber for T&T foot­ball fans as they cel­e­brat­ed their team’s mas­ter plan against the Mex­i­cans. I al­ways knew T&T could not go in and fight the Mex­i­cans toe to toe or they would be floored even be­fore the con­test re­al­ly got go­ing. So, the fact that T&T start­ed with 5 at the back and 4 in mid­field ul­ti­mate­ly sti­fled their op­po­nents. The So­ca War­riors were dou­ble-tack­ling the gift­ed Mex­i­cans and nev­er gave them the room or al­lowed them to set­tle and when they oc­ca­sion­al­ly breached the de­fence, Mar­vin Phillip was ab­solute­ly bril­liant. T&T’s over­all de­fence was ex­cel­lent and I did say that all the fans can ask for is for their team to play with the right at­ti­tude, heart and de­ter­mi­na­tion. Well, they got that and more.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, on Wednes­day night, T&T went down to El Sal­vador by two goals to nil but the team can hold their heads high. They did not play par­tic­u­lar­ly well in the first half against the Sal­vado­ri­ans. They did not have the flu­en­cy that we have seen in oth­er games and some play­ers seemed to be leg-weary. How­ev­er, they gave it their all in the sec­ond pe­ri­od and were un­lucky not to score. But this El Sal­vador team is a good one and they took their op­por­tu­ni­ties when they were pre­sent­ed.

As I sug­gest­ed, it is a tough group as orig­i­nal­ly Cu­ra­cao was the fourth team and their foot­ball is on the rise. But when they were re­placed by Guatemala as a re­sult of some COVID-19 re­lat­ed is­sues, the So­ca War­riors had to get a re­sult against El Sal­vador. This re­sult, cou­pled with Mex­i­co’s win against Guatemala on Wednes­day night, now makes it im­pos­si­ble for T&T to fin­ish first or an un­like­ly sec­ond in the group as Mex­i­co's fi­nal game is against the al­ready qual­i­fied El Sal­vador. For a sec­ond-place fin­ish, it would mean T&T must de­feat Guatemala and hope that El Sal­vador does the un­think­able and beat Mex­i­co. I ex­pect El Sal­vador to rest some of their first-choice play­ers which would make the task even eas­i­er for the Mex­i­can play­ers and their band of hooli­gan sup­port­ers who were ab­solute­ly dis­grace­ful dur­ing and af­ter the T&T match with their overt racism to­wards the T&T play­ers and fans. It sad­dens me that racism still man­ages to rear its ug­ly head in our beau­ti­ful game.

In ret­ro­spect, at best, T&T may fin­ish 3rd in the group but more im­por­tant­ly, I can see a light at the end of the tun­nel. I be­lieve coach An­gus Eve and his staff have done a good job. The play­ers are fight­ing for him. They are go­ing out on­to the field of play with the right at­ti­tude and the de­ter­mi­na­tion that T&T fans have longed to see in their na­tion­al team. There is still some iron­ing out to do but one has to re­mem­ber that the So­ca War­riors went in­to this tour­na­ment with­out some of their best play­ers and that was the main rea­son I felt that they were fac­ing an up­hill bat­tle to qual­i­fy for the quar­ter­fi­nals from the group stage. What a dif­fer­ence Levi and Ju­dah Gar­cia would have made as well as skip­per Khaleem Hy­land and Jo­evin Jones. To­geth­er with some of the younger play­ers, I can see the team’s per­for­mance im­prove­ment over the next year.

Off the field, the ad­min­is­tra­tion needs to give the coach­ing staff and the play­ers all the sup­port need­ed so they can take the foot­ball to the next lev­el. The fans are beg­ging out for the day when, once again, they can go to the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and see the So­ca War­riors take on the might of CON­CA­CAF and not on­ly com­pete against them but be in a po­si­tion to get a vic­to­ry. With the prop­er for­mu­la and right at­ti­tude, who knows? That day may come much soon­er than ex­pect­ed.

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.