Filed under: Cricket
The second post Alan Stanford Caribbean 2020 concluded last Sunday.
It seems that not much has changed since the billionaire’s two tournaments in Antigua. In fact, I might say we may have regressed.
Once again, even with an under-strength team, Trinidad and Tobago were easily the best team in the tournament. The team draped in Red, White and Black seemed to almost make up for their failure, at home, against Guyana last year.
In the process dedicated their win to the departed former WI player and selector Joey Carew.
But while the Trinidad and Tobago team maintained their level, I can’t exactly say the rest of the Caribbean has raised their standard.
The only team that seemed improved in the tournament was Canada.
Every other team, including Hampshire and Somerset, seemed a couple players short of a competitive team, with quite a few teams rolling with a big belly man who looked like he could barely survive a fete match, far less an international tournament.
While teams like the Windwards, Jamaica and Barbados looked like they had decent to solid teams on paper, their tactics or lack of planning made them very easy to dismantle.
Guyana had a horror tournament not too dissimilar to their embarrassing performance in South Africa save for one spectacular win against the CCC and a dramatic win against Somerset.
Even in those wins, their cricket was generally poor.
The Leewards might as well not turned up except for serving up Justin Athanaze. I’m mildly surprised they actually beat Canada.
I had to wonder, like Curtly Ambrose said out loud, if the rules of cricket had changed to the point that basic common sense cricket is not considered in the shortened form by the Caribbean players.
Is it that Bajan coaches are now telling their young players that lofting the ball into the hands of deep midwicket is the surest way to get 2 runs of 3 balls while chasing?
Because that certainly looked second nature to Carlo Morris when Barbados seemed to have their game against Hampshire won. They lost that game by the way, in a super over.
I just had to wonder if coaches and players discuss game plans or adjust them in this tourney.
The Windwards were always going to struggle against any team that knows how to bowl properly, as they propped themselves on their aggressive batting and seemed just to hope they could outscore their opponents.
Jamaica, apart from Marlon Samuels, seemed not to turn up really, and once a team didn’t bow down to the fairly solid list of players they had, the Jamaicans didn’t seem willing to turn it up.
Barbados had little plan apart from Dwayne Smith when batting, and that my friends is a sorry state of affairs.
Even Trinidad and Tobago was occasionally guilty of thoughtless cricket, particularly Adrian Barath and one of the focal points of this blog Denesh Ramdin.
In this tournament, Ramdin showed both why he should and should not be in the West Indies team.
I’ll start with why he should not.
Ramdin is still the best wicketkeeper in the West Indies. But he has been giving his wicket away far too easily as a batsman, particularly considering his talent with the bat.
Canada’s Indian wicketkeeper Ashish Bagai figured out it wasn’t that hard to unsettle Ramdin’s game and he talked “Shotta” into giving his wicket away in a game that shouldn’t have gotten as close as it did.
Ramdin’s rashness in other games didn’t help, and that’s why he’s not wearing Maroon for the World Cup.
However on Sunday, Ramdin showed why he should be in the squad.
In a captain’s knock which set up T&T for the win, Ramdin reinforced my opinion that he is perhaps one of the better clutch role players in Caribbean cricket.
In a crisis, or rather when he has to think about what he’s doing, Denesh Ramdin is a match winner.
Think about it, in T&T’s much vaunted Airtel Champions’ League appearance, Denesh Ramdin often played the crucial foil for Kieron Pollard’s blitz hitting while himself contributing crucial scores.
Particularly in the remarkable win against New South Wales, it was a “scratchy” Ramdin who consolidated with Darren Bravo then Pollard, easing the pressure on the hitter with sensible cricket.
He is the kind of role player the West Indies need in the limited overs team.
The problem is too many coaches in the Caribbean use players incorrectly. In this tourney, Ramdin was often promoted to pinch hit in Dwayne Bravo and Pollard’s absence, when instead he should have been asked to play naturally.
He’s intelligent enough to pick gaps and pinch singles to make the scoreboard tick without losing his wicket with a forced big shot.
Which ironically is where Lendl Simmons succeeded in this tournament. Simmons has once again put himself in the face of the West Indies selectors by playing sensible cricket.
While his partner Barath was out trying to club almost everything to the boundary, Simmons impressed by learning when to tone it down.
It’s no surprise that he, and two other batsmen who used similar approaches, Marlon Samuels and Darren Bravo, happened to have great tournaments by doing this.
Unfortunately Simmons’ reconciliation with the WICB, has come too late for World Cup consideration. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Simmons should be a part of the WI team.
Without him though, the lane is open for Darren Bravo to shine. While I resist the temptation to dub him “Brian Bravo”, the cousin of the prince may well be one of the players to watch in the subcontinent with his eerily similar talents.
I just hope he learns to bat as long and accumulate big scores like his relative.
And in closing, I think Darrell Hair would no ball Kevon Cooper.
I know I would.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I love soca music, you know it’s in my blood.
So as a soca loving Trinidadian, I feel entitled to say when the music that I so love isn’t quite up to scratch.
Apparently this is ok, until something negative is said about Machel Montano.
Yes, in recent weeks I have taken flack from fans of the incredible HD for criticising, or even in some cases not placing Machel on the lofty pedestal he is perceived to belong upon.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no hater of Machel, in fact the first CD I ever bought was “Any Minute Now” by Machel Montano and Xtatik.
But I believe the Trinidad and Tobago public have developed an amazing double standard with regard to the Taipan.
This year, Machel’s releases have been lukewarm, to be diplomatic. Yet today after the release of “Illegal“, social networking sites went crazy as if the song was the second coming of “Sugar Bum Bum“.
To ensure I didn’t hear the wrong version of the song which played while he made an appearance on the morning show on 96.1 WEFM this morning, I clicked play on the song several times.
After four listens, I stated that I found “Illegal” to be garbage.
My mistake was probably that I made the mistake of calling it a “Waka Flocka Soca” on a Machel fan’s status.
In typical Machel fan defense mode, I was called out for my support of Iwer George, and as such should have no qualms with Machel singing “shit”.
Not Up to Standard
I hold my point, until I reiterate the attitude portrayed by Machel fans with regard to lower quality offerings being granted an almost unanimous bligh.
“Machel Montano has long reached the stage of his career where he has established himself as the artist who can make shit into a hit. Just like Jay-Z; OF COURSE he fall off. Lack of competition causes a lack of innovation. Strange that certain artists gets judged according to “their own standard”, while the rest of the crop gets judged against NO standard.”
Here’s where I strongly disagree.
Machel Montano has a long career, yes. Enough that if he’s having a bad year that we wouldn’t immediately blacklist him yes, but not to the point where we ignore his shit and proclaim it as genius.
There is a difference. In allowing Machel Montano to sing utter garbage and still hype it up as if it were manna from heaven, we as a people set a poor standard for the industry on a whole.
A poor standard that encouraged Iwer George to sing the “shit” he does, simply because that’s all he has to do to be successful or in fact it’s what he should do to be successful.
What standard are we promoting to upcoming Soca artistes if Machel’s poor music is still heralded?
And has Machel actually achieved that right? Is he so head and shoulders above the rest of Soca music like his fans believe?
The answer is no.
Here’s where I really have pissed Machel fans off.
At the turn of the millenium, Machel Montano, albeit by his own efforts to make it internationally, was a peripheral figure in Carnival. Between 2001 to 2003. Machel Montano was essntially not a part of Carnival.
During that time Ragga Soca flourished, and many who previously said they didn’t care much for Soca music, began stating the music was finally starting to grip their attention.
Mind you Machel Montano was around prior to this.
Names like KMC, Treason (now 3Suns), Bunji Garlin, Fay Ann Lyons, Maximus Dan, Benjai, Shurwayne Winchester and Destra Garcia came forward.
They came and all of these artists have created music which will be and in some cases have already been considered classics.
Was Machel truly missed during this period?
Remember around this time we also saw the final curtains come down on strong artists like Superblue, Ronnie Mc Intosh and Preacher.
Think well.
Between 2000 -2005, the most iconic artist of Soca Music was: Bunji Garlin.
Bunji Garlin was the biggest soca artiste for half a decade
Since 2005, the ONLY year that Machel has been head and shoulders above all other comers in Soca music has been his outstanding year in 2007.
Now admittedly, the hype around Machel has never been matched by any of the artists I’ve called and none can probably deliver as good a stage show but to simply dismiss these artists as not in Machel’s class is a bit much.
For every Dance With You, there’s been Soul on Fire. For every Hold You Tonight there’s been a Make it Yours. For every Band of the Year there’s been a Get On, or a Bachannal or a Bonnie and Clyde. Hell for a Cock Back and Roll or Bubblenut there’s been a Snake Oil or Over & Over.
But somehow Machel’s “hits” are worth more for some reason.
That’s my grouse with Machel here, he is ridiculously overhyped to almost criminal levels.
To the point that Machel fans can’t be honest about their hero and accept that maybe, Machel hasn’t been up to scratch this year. (Particularly after having a solid year last year.)
Or that Machel hasn’t been the most consistent soca artiste in the last ten years.
(That award, in my opinion belongs to Destra).
Unfortunately, our society revolves around hype, just look at how we elected our government.
The first time I ever got star struck was when I met Michael ‘Joey’ Carew.
I kid you not, I was probably seven.
Back then, I was still in my now much forgotten days of aspiring youth cricketer. But my familiarity with Carew, or that moment when he shook my hand for the first time, didn’t come when I was wearing whites or after I had made a solid knock in the nets, it was in the Catholic Church.
One random Sunday (pardon me for not remembering the exact date) my parents, as they did so skillfully back then, smuggled me into the car to head to church at the corner of De Verteuil and Warren Street.
And there it happened. My father pointed him out to me first, “that’s Joey Carew, West Indies selector.”
He was sitting probably a couple rows ahead of us, and to be honest nothing he did seemed out of the extraordinary.
He did not come with the gloss and arrogance of fame I had come to expect as an impressionable youngster watching television.
He was gracious and polite.
Humble.
And all the while as I sat a couple rows back, like a true student of the game I was then, I was thinking about the famous story of a guy named Carew who took in a youngster named Lara, who just happened to become one of the best batsmen of all time.
I kept wondering if I would make an impression like that, if the maroon sun hat I favoured to Harvard’s Sunday morning clinic would suddenly have that crest that meant so much to me back then.
Dreams, what is a child without them?
I didn’t interact with him on that day.
That day came some weeks later, months even.
One morning, we came in about 15 minutes before mass. My mother sent me for the Catholic News. By the time I got back, there he was.
Former West Indies opening batsman Joey Carew was in the pew ahead of us, joking with my father.
He shook my hand for the sign of peace.
An inspiring moment, I had a great knock in nets at Mucurapo during training that morning, I think.
As the news of his passing came last Sunday, my mind raced back to those days at St. Theresa’s, the time he shook my hand.
Or the Christmas morning he walked across to greet my parents.
Or when he commented how tall I was getting.
His willingness to hear out every cricket opinion or otherwise of anyone who came his way.
He seemed to welcome all.
My family, we hardly knew the man.
I hardly knew the man.
But back then, he was a symbol of what a good Catholic, scratch that, a good person should be.
The first role model I ever met.
Rest in Peace Michael ‘Joey’ Carew.
Plain Talk, Good English 