Category Archives: Sports

General T&T, Sports

Thanks for restoring our pride

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By Raffique Shah
September 20, 2025

Raffique ShahThousands here in Trinidad and Tobago who watched the recent World Athletics Championships do not know how fortunate they are to have live telecasting of the prestigious event. A mere 20 years ago there was limited coverage of such events, and very often television and radio stations paid huge sums of money to earn the right to carry the events; both audiences and owners/managers felt cheated. You don’t have to be a fan of athletics or any sport to appreciate what it means for nationals of any country to see their representatives on these international stages-stadia, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc.
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General T&T, Sports

Ulric ‘Buggy’ Haynes: our black prince

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 02, 2025

PART II

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeUlric “Buggy” Haynes was not only a sports figure but a social activist as well. He led the charge to save the Tacarigua Savannah, the largest green space area in the northeastern part of the island, from becoming a concrete and asphalt jungle. The Green Space Committee raised almost $100,000 to challenge the government’s violation of our community’s well-being.

Buggy led the charge with Dr Carol James and Peter Burke to oppose the government’s action. He gave the first $20,000 to hire lawyers to fight the case, money that he borrowed from one of his sons, Verron Ulric Haynes, the first and only Trinbagonian to win a Super Bowl for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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General T&T, Sports

Ulric ‘Buggy’ Haynes: our black prince

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 26, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeToday, we have come to bury our black prince in this place where he was born, lived, and died. In gathering here, in St Mary’s Anglican Church, Tacarigua, the second oldest Anglican church in the island, we come to honour the life, legacy, and work of Ulric “Buggy” Haynes. I can think of no better description of our beloved brother than the words Ossie Davis delivered at Malcolm X’s home-going in 1965.
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General T&T, Sports

Wos’ Than Slavery

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 04, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeA week ago I received the following note from Joyce Thomas, a retired VP of a government girl’s college. She has been involved in sports at the Eddie Hart Ground (EHG) as a sprinter and coach over the past 63 years. Joyce is “a level 5 World Athletics Throws coach and has at least 12 athletes on Trinidad Carifta teams. This year Peyton Winter won silver medals in the Carifta Games and gold medals in the NACAC competition last year.”
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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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