Plain as day for T&T, WI
With two games to go in the 2026 football World Cup qualifying campaign, Trinidad and Tobago languish third in the four-team grouping with five points from four games, four goals scored (three against last-placed Bermuda) and three points behind second-placed Curacao. Last Saturday, West Indies were 79 for one in the 20th over after being set a target of 208 in the first One-Day International by hosts Bangladesh. On a raging turner in Mirpur, they then lost nine wickets for 54 runs to lose the match by 74 runs with 11 overs to spare. Two scenarios. One conclusion: not good enough. Why they are, up to this point, not good enough requires proper analysis of the many variables which contribute to a team’s performance on any given day. Yet so many of these analyses are coloured by biases which result in reactions which range from knee-jerk cheer-leading to virulent lambasting. There should be no misunderstanding though about both teams not being good enough...up to this point. If they were better than the sum of their performances so far, they wouldn’t be in the positions that they are. It’s like the observer who notes that so-and-so is a better player than his paltry batting average over several years of performing at the highest level. Well, if he were a better player, his batting average wouldn’t be so poor, would it? You can’t fix something without first accepting that there is something to be fixed. And by fixing, I don’t mean passing laws which widen the net at the same time that we boast about being among the most naturally talented people on the planet. World Athletics Championships gold medallist Keshorn Walcott and silver medallist Jereem Richards remind us, not so much of that presumed abundant talent, but the benefits of maximising that raw potential with incessant, consistent hard work, determination and perseverance. So when are we going to grow up as a people and acknowledge our own shortcomings, in sport if nothing else? How did we come to have such fragile egos, such an infantile mindset that we pout and point fingers at someone else for failings which are patently of our own making? Is it that all the bravado, the gallerying and general loud-mouthed noisiness are nothing more than a collective masquerade for a society that, from top to bottom, suffers from such deep insecurities to the extent that even entertaining the thought of weakness or frailty or error is too frightening to contemplate? There is no shortage of people here who are bright for the wrong reason—who can pee on your head and make you believe it is rain. Then again, such eloquent mamaguism only works when the recipients of such nonsense are so gullible that it is not even a challenge to fool them all the time. It should be a little different in sport though, shouldn’t it? Because, at the end of the day, the numbers are there as plain as day to tell the real story behind the public relations tripe. Trinidad and Tobago (100) are below Jamaica (68) and Curacao (82) on the FIFA rankings. Ahead of the final two qualifying games next month, the Jamaicans top the group by a point over the Dutch islanders. Surprise, surprise. At the Gold Cup in the USA last June, Dwight Yorke’s side were thrashed 5-0 by the hosts before drawing with Haiti (ten men for most of the game) and Saudi Arabia. And yes, if you want to step back and appreciate the wider football landscape, this nation has qualified just once for the senior men’s football World Cup finals. We all know the chaos that has ensued since on the local football front, to the extent that the so-called Pro League remains on life support. If the thesaurus could be amended to include another phrase for “collective delusion” it would be “Trinidad and Tobago football.” Yet bewilderingly, cricket’s disconnect from reality is not limited to a single territory but region-wide. Here’s an example. Last Thursday evening on a cricket discussion on radio in Dominica, it was all about quick fixes (get the “Legends” on board, pick Dominican batter Kavem Hodge, fire coach Daren Sammy) with not even a modicum of interest in appreciating how far the game has slipped in the region and how long it will take to properly resurrect it, assuming we can even agree on a proper plan for said resurrection. For decades, West Indies batters had gone to the Indian sub-continent and coped successfully, although not always, against world-class spinners on tailor-made surfaces. Now, the inference is that pitches like Mirpur are blatantly unfair. Of course the real issue here is the continuous decline in skill level of West Indies batsmanship, but that’s more than our eggshell egos can handle.