Category Archives: Sports

General T&T, Passed on, Sports

Relief from grief

By Raffique Shah
August 10, 2024

Raffique ShahI thought I would never get over her. That night when everybody had left and just a few members of the family remained to keep us company, comforting words from my dearest relatives and friends hardly helped. I was just seeing her face everywhere.

Rosina must be laughing wherever she was: I feel sure she was in our room because I heard her laughter, her voice, and even saw her face smiling at me. Readers might become bored with this 78-year-old geezer who has just lost a wife. That happens almost every day to someone or several people worldwide, and when people read this column they’d probably laugh at me pining away after Rosina.
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General T&T, Religion, Sports

The Grandeur of Men and Women

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 28, 2023

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn November 11, Raphael Dwamena, a Ghanaian footballer, collapsed and died during an Egnatia’s soccer game against Partizani in a tiny town in Albania. He was 28 years old and a renowned football star. Dwamena was the top scorer for his Albanian team and enjoyed a certain amount of success with them. This season he was the leading scorer in the Albanian league.
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General T&T, International, Sports

Enjoying the World Cup

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By Raffique Shah
November 28, 2022

Raffique ShahAs the football World Cup tournament kicked off last week, igniting a global epidemic of “football fever” which strikes once every four years, your humble scribe duly fell in line with the billion-plus people viewing via their local television networks.

Now, I must declare that I am no “football peong”, a fanatic who cannot miss a crucial game in any of the many league matches, especially those played in Europe, where giants of the sport, from owners of clubs who eat, drink and sleep football, to star players who are traded like commodities, many of them valued at millions of dollars, which tells me that this “beautiful sport” is more about money than sport, which I bear in mind as I watch the games.
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England, General T&T, India, International, Sports

The British Re-Conquest of India

By Stephen Kangal
November 11, 2022

Stephen KangalThe Indian performance last night at the Adelaide Oval was a monumental anti-climax breaking the hearts of more than a billion devotees and 45m in the diaspora by their lack-luster approach to batting and hanging their bats to dry outside the off stump and unable to attack the English quite ordinary bowling.

Honestly from the very first over I thought India would have been a walk over for the Brits on a pitch that held no horrors for the pulverising pair of Hales and Butler who scored freely and indeed majestically as if they were playing against an English County pick up side.
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General T&T, Protest, Racism Watch, Sports

Giant leap by a Black man

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By Raffique Shah
September 27, 2021

Raffique ShahLast Sunday, dealing with the potential I saw in many of the young players who competed in the recently-concluded CPL T-20 cricket tournament, I introduced the issue of race in sports as highlighted by several Black American athletes who used the stage of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968 to confront racism head-on. I cited the iconic photograph of sprinters and 200-metres medallists Tommie Smith, who won the event in a new world record of 19.83 seconds, Australian Peter Norman who was second in 20.00, and John Carlos, who was third, also in 20.00. The fourth finisher was Trinidad & Tobago’s Edwin Roberts, who clocked 20.30.
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General T&T, Sports

Healing through sports

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By Raffique Shah
September 20, 2021

Raffique ShahI was hooked to the Caribbean Premier League cricket tournament over the past two weeks, from the opening match between the Trinbago Knight Riders and the Guyana Amazon Warriors to the thriller-of-a-final in Warner Park between the host’s St Kitts-Nevis Patriots and the St Lucia Kings, that went down to a last ball decider. As is normal for me when I feast on sports, I look beyond the participants and their performances. In CPL cricket, I find not just entertainment and scintillating skills, but more importantly, from my perspective, a panorama of Caribbean life that can teach Caribbean societies lessons in race relations and class compression.
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General T&T, Sports

Sports overlords must be made to account

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By Raffique Shah
August 08, 2021

Raffique ShahIf you think you cannot possibly get any angrier over the state of sports in the country, what with the annihilation of Team TTO at the Tokyo Olympics, our cricket teams performing way below what is expected of them, and our once-proud football team booted out of World Cup 2026 by some miniscule islands, then read the local football legend’s recently published Everald Gally Cummings, The Autobiography.
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General T&T, Passed on, Sports, USA

The legacy of Terrence Clarke

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 10, 2021

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTerrence Clarke was on the cusp of achieving the goal to which he had aspired for the 19 years of his life: a career in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

In 2021, he was regarded as one of the best shooting guards in US colleges and universities (Kentucky Wildcats Basketball). All the major professional basketball teams wanted him to be a part of their programmes, but he wanted to play for the Boston Celtics. Terrence idolised Rajon Rondo, a member of the Boston Celtics from 2006 to 2014, and an elite member of the NBA.
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General T&T, Health, Passed on, Sports

‘Granny’ Luces: Making of an Icon

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By Raffique Shah
february 22, 2021

Raffique Shah“There’s an old lady here…she says she wants to register to run the marathon…I don’t know what to do…can you come and sort this out?”

It was sometime in March 1984, and we were organising the second Mirror Marathon later (The Trinidad and Tobago International Marathon). We had successfully staged the inaugural race in April 1983, and were excited about the second edition. The response from would-be marathoners was enthusiastic. We expected to have more than 500 entrants, up from the 300 who had run last year’s race.
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General T&T, Schools, Sports

Adulating the Hillview T20 Supremacy

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By Stephen Kangal
May 15, 2019

Stephen KangalI was there at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy, Torouba on Friday 10 May to witness first hand with my colleagues Bedoor, Zainool and Ramlogan Mahabir, ball by ball the progressive demolition of the Presentation Chaguanas (PC) Team from the Caroni plains that dared to challenge the Hillview (HVC) side originating from the Northern Hills in the Finals of the T20 Secondary School Championships.
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