West Indian batting legend, Brian Charles Lara, held the first of nine detailed development sessions of this year’s blink/bmobile Future Stars Cricket Programme at the indoor nets of the National Cricket Centre in Balmain, Couva, yesterday.
Following the official launch, Lara was joined by several members of the Trinidad and Tobago Under-17 and Under-19 teams in a healthy discussion and warm-up segment on the gentleman’s game.
These high level sessions, which will be conducted by some of TT’s best coaches inclusive of the record-breaking batsman, received a healthy injection of $500,000 from the main sponsors as they once again partner with the the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) to assist in the overall development of young athletes.
It was 50 years ago next week, and the gods of sport are sharing the same rickety bench in the West Indies dressing room at Lord's: the planet's loudest mouth and cricket's prettiest assassin, Muhammad Ali and Garfield St Aubrun Sobers. Not unusually, the former is doing his damnedest to dominate attention. Undeterred, the latter looks him squarely in the eyes - respectfully, smilingly, unflinchingly; an equal in every meaningful sense.
A few days earlier, the greatest cricketer who ever drew breath had begun his definitive campaign. Sublimely stylish, cooler than a frozen cucumber and more or less a team in his own right, the Great Garfield had struck 161 at Old Trafford to help administer England's first three-day home defeat since the Second World War. In doing so, he also kicked off the purplest patch in Test history.
Next up, in a match intermittently watched by Ali, was a Lord's hundred that did not so much ward off impending defeat as render it laughable. Come campaign's end his swagbag contained 722 runs, 20 wickets and ten catches: still an unchallenged record for a Test series. Maybe Ali's Instagram message was bang-on. Maybe the impossible really is "nothing". In which case, is it too fanciful to propose that he drew some inspiration from the Great Garfield's breath-snatching brilliance beneath Father Time's approving gaze?
The planet's loudest mouth and cricket's prettiest assassin had appreciably more in common, of course, than floating like butterflies and stinging like bees. They were both outsiders who scaled an unprecedented pinnacle of excellence; both dazzling symbols of the triumphant unprivileged. Both, furthermore, exerted an impact that reverberated far beyond the ropes: one knowingly, one warily.
GUYANESE-born cricket commentator Joseph ‘Reds’ Perreira has maintained that the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) selection panel has named the wrong squad for the first four games of the ongoing Ballr tri-series involving Australia and South Africa.Perreira is of the view that some changes to the squad must be made in order for West Indies to be more competitive for the remainder of the tri-series.
“The wrong squad was selected, and I am not surprised by our performance against Australia last Sunday. Seriously there needs to be some changes to the squad,” Perreira told Guyana Chronicle Sport yesterday in an exclusive interview. Further the veteran commentator questioned whether West Indies chief selector Clive Lloyd has lost his focus on the youth policy strategy he implemented last year prior to the home series against Australia.
West Indies women’s wicketkeeper/batter Merrisa Aguilliera is calling on all young people to stay away from negativity, if they want to succeed.
The Marac Moruga resident made the comment to students of Montrose Government, while on the Champions tour organised by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the SPORTT. Aguilliera was on the West Indies team that won the Women’s World T20 title in India in March. She was accompanied on the tour by Stacey King, Britney Cooper, Samuel Badree and Lendl Simmons who were on the West Indies men’s team that also won the World T20, as well as Kirstan Kallicharan who played for the West Indies Under-19 team that won the ICC U-19 World Cup crown in Bangladesh in February.
"The past is history." So proclaims Lendl Simmons' status on WhatsApp. It is the mantra of a man who wants to look forward in life, not moan.
Yet Simmons cannot help but feel aggrieved. He, like Chris Gayle, Darren Sammy, Dwayne Bravo and Andre Russell, was not considered eligible for selection in West Indies' ongoing ODI tri-series against Australia and South Africa. All those players did not play in this year's West Indies domestic 50-over tournament, instead playing in the Big Bash.
"It's just foolish," Simmons says. "We are available to play but we are not being picked. It's just a stupid rule that they have. Unless that rule changes, no one will play for the West Indies, because I don't think anyone is going to give up franchise cricket to play regional cricket when the fees are not suitable enough. A lot of other teams' players don't play in their domestic [competitions] but still play for their country. This is not the same for us, but such is life."
While wishing West Indies well, Simmons warns that "we could embarrass ourselves because Australia and South Africa are not coming here with their A teams. They are coming here with their full teams."
