Tony Cozier

GRENADA prime minister Keith Mitchell’s passion for cricket long preceded his passion for politics.

THE divisions within West Indies cricket that have transformed the once dominant force in the world game into one of the weakest are ever widening.

  HIS unforgettable six-hitting spectacle that sealed the West Indies’ unlikely last over conquest of England in the men’s final of the World T20 in Kolkata transformed Carlos Brathwaite into an overnight superstar.

THE euphoria that swept through the cricketing Caribbean following last Sunday’s men’s team’s victory snatched from the jaws of defeat in the World T20 final in Kolkata has been accompanied by the heated, long-running debate over the future of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).

IT IS a formula for T20 cricket ideally suited to their game.

It is not difficult to imagine Rangy Nanan going to his grave with a wry smile on his lips.

Chris Gayle warmed up, so to speak, for the West Indies’ opening match in the World T20 at a Mumbai disco in the company of Bollywood starlet Sneha Ullal.

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) confirmed at its annual general meeting in Jamaica last weekend that its name was to be changed to Cricket West Indies.

THE lawyers advising delegates of the 41 member states of football’s North, Central America and the Caribbean Confederation (Concacaf) on the need for change might just as well have been Caribbean Community (Caricom) governments addressing the directors of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) on the same theme.

VIJAY MALLYA, the Indian entrepreneur who recently paid the reported franchise fee of US$2 for the Barbados Tridents in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), and United Breweries Holdings (UBHL), the company he heads, have been declared ‘wilful defaulters’ by three Indian three state-owned banks.

CONCERNED that prevalence of spin was ‘impacting negatively’ on pace, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) directed its cricket committee last June “to make further recommendations to prioritize the development of fast bowlers in the region and for the West Indies team.”

Their teenaged team has brought a welcome, long overdue whiff of optimism to West Indies cricket.

Ian Bishop’s first reaction when Keemo Paul whipped off the bails with Zimbabwe’s No.11 Richard Ngarva backing up in last Sunday’s decisive Under 19 World Cup match in Bangladesh was, ‘Oh, No!’.

A LOT has happened in Darren Bravo’s life in the four years since Steve Waugh proclaimed him as ‘world cricket’s next superstar, no doubt’.

By Tony Cozier It is typical of the present state of West Indies cricket that Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s retirement from the game he mastered in his peculiar style for 21 years, 164 Tests and 268 ODIs should have been inappropriately shrouded in controversy.

Allen Stanford’s rare interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from his cell at the high-security jail in Florida last week revived mixed memories of the Texan billionaire’s involvement in West Indies cricket.

By Tony Cozier   Steve Smith’s proposed deal to Jason Holder to enliven the last day of the water-logged Test in Sydney was strictly fantasy.

A YEAR that began in turmoil ended in turmoil for West Indies cricket.

EMMANUEL NANTHAN just doesn’t get it. In an interview with experienced Guyanese cricket writer Sean Devers last week, the vice-president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) reminded us that ‘only the shareholders’ (the individual boards of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the Windward Islands) can dissolve the company WICB Inc.,

EIGHTEEN years on, the West Indies’ thrashing by Australia in the first Test in Hobart last weekend bears uncanny similarities to their predecessors’ routs in all three Tests in Pakistan in November and December 1997.