 So, topping the Sports Mag zone for this Friday. Cricket. Lovely cricket. In a year which has had much controversy surrounding West Indies cricket, a shining light has shone through yet again for the men in Maroon. On Thursday, the wind has recorded a four-wicket win against England to clinch victory in their five-match T20 series. After winning the toss and electing to field, the wind has dismissed England for 132 from 11.3 overs with Man of the Match, Gouda Keshmodi picking up 3 for 24, while Andre Russell, Akil Hossain and Jason Holder all claimed two wickets. Phil Salt, who was named player of the series, was again England's main man with the bat with 38 runs. In reply, the West Indies led by a runner ball 43 from Shea Hope, got over the line with four balls to spare. Sherfinn Rutherford and Johnson-Charles gipped in with 30 and 27 respectively. Now, the series victory now marks a third consecutive T20 victory for the West Indies after defeating India and South Africa earlier this year. Now, with us via Zoom, to break down the success of the team or cricket correspondent Fazir Mohamed, we perennially talk about the West Indies being inconsistent, but to be fair to the lads, three consecutive series wins now against good opponents, so they deserve some credit here, don't they? Absolutely lads, no question about it. Narrow series wins, but series wins nevertheless, and as you said correctly, competitive teams, very competitive teams, South Africa, in South Africa, India, in the Caribbean, and we all know the quality and the depth of time available to India, especially in the T20 format. And then you added that this series victory, never mind that it was 2-0 and then pulled back to 2-0. The fact is that in crunch time, the decisive match, the West Indies prevailed. And yes, it was in the final over, and yes, could have been going either way. But the fact is, the West Indies, certainly in 2023, winning more than losing in T20 international. And that's very important, because we've talked about this ad nausea, that when you spend more time losing rather than winning, that almost becomes a default position. So now you have the reverse. Not to a great degree, not to a huge margin, but enough that offers encouragement heading into a world cup year. Yeah, and when we spoke with you earlier this week, Faz, you were emphasizing the point that rotating players and getting players some game time here in a series that is months ahead of the T20 World Cup had a lot to do with preparing for the World Cup. And you were not focusing so much on the result as far as you were concerned, win or lose, that wasn't the critical issue for you, was how the players performed and how the new players getting an opportunity performed. And I guess the team management would be reasonably satisfied with how things have gone. Players like Oshane Thomas, who hasn't had a lot of West Indies cricket on the fringe now, getting an opportunity yesterday and didn't do badly. He didn't do badly at all. But you could see him feeling his way back again in the T20 World Cup, because as you know, very well, there's a very narrow margin for error when you're a bowler in T20 cricket, even more so when it's a small ground. As most grounds are in the Caribbean, you miss your lane, you're gone for four, more than likely six. Your bowler full toss, you're looking for the Yorker, turns into a full toss, and it goes for plenty. And these are the challenges. Yes, he had a raw pace. I think we all recall him shaking up and roughing up the Indian top order in India some three years ago when he had just burst onto the scene against England in the Caribbean in 2019. Again, there have been so many other issues that continue to redouble the growth of his career that now we see him once again, coming back into the thick of things. But obviously there is that pace, but he needs with more opportunities in the T20 international format, more opportunities, maybe in franchise cricket as well, to hone those skills, because that's really what it's all about. That bowling is so vital, because as you think about it, one bar over, 18th, 19th, 20th over, you go for 20, 25 runs, that's the difference between winning and losing in most times. Yeah, and anything to be said about Robman Powell's captaincy for us, because we have seen in the past, where captaincy of a West Indus team turns out to be a bit of a blight on a lot of our players, and they are hamstrung by the job, and then the performance of the team injures them mentally and otherwise, many of them don't retain the captaincy. But Powell, certainly in his first year as captain here, is showing a lot of comfort in the job. I think Poison Chalice is the phrase we often use when we talk about West Indus captaincy, and that certainly was the case for Nicholas Puran. We all recall how the team suffered, how his game suffered, and he's back to his best in many ways, know that he doesn't have that responsibility. And I think, yes, Robman Powell seems to relish the captaincy, seems to enjoy it, and if you just listen to his interviews, he's offering a level of candle and frankness that sometimes people might find surprising. Talking about the team not really being up for it for the fourth match, they didn't have the energy, you wouldn't often find a West Indus captain being comfortably up with admitting that, but clearly Robman Powell seems to enjoy the role of captaincy, and from what we're seeing so far, with the results, not just the results, with his own performance, with his own contribution, with the body language that we're seeing with his teammates, and it's not just about winning, but also about the way they gel, the way they come together, and yes, there will be many more tough times to come. That's going to be the challenge for him, but certainly he looks the part of a West Indus captain in this T20 format. Yeah, without it all first of all, I just want to say because I saw a comment on our YouTube platform, in fact, a few comments, and we were reminded after your last segment that Fazir Muhammad only appears on this show after West Indus defeats, so I am quite happy for us that you were able to appear this time around after a victory and a serious victory at that. So thank you very much for being here with us today. One of the things for me in terms of the hallmarks of quality teams is their ability to figure out what went wrong and how to correct them, and I think we saw that from the West Indus yesterday in terms of how they approached things in the field especially. How impressed were you from that standpoint? Before we get to that, I'm actually a little good that I'm losing the time of the Sportsmax cricket hatchet man, but what do you do? This is how it is, but anyway, you're right. It's important that you don't see a repetition of mistakes. We've been mourning about this for a long, long time, that you see players making the same mistakes over and over again, the same carelessness, the same fundamental errors, and that's not good to say that it's not going to happen again. We have a long run in to a world T20, and again, just to put it in context and maybe drawing on my hatchet man persona. In 2021, West Indus beat Australia 4-1 in the Caribbean, and it was all sweet and light. Everything was hunky-dory. Everything seemed to be going fine, and we all know what happened in the defense of the title in the UAE. Australia emerged as champions. West Indus second the last in their group. So again, it's important, even if we get carried away, even if the media get carried away, even if the fans get carried away, it's important for the players themselves to recognize that this is all a process. They've done well in 2023. They start 2024 with a T20 series in Australia, end of January, into February. That's going to be another marker. And again, as they move along into the IPL, that is going to be another point of reference for these players to really, again, refine those skills and ensure that they do exactly what you're expecting, regarding not a repetition of errors, but correcting them. And in fact, even going a step further by showing that you've learned something about the opposition, that you've come prepared to take on each and every single individual. Yeah, very much the case, fans. I want to know what you think about a couple of selection decisions throughout the course of this series and what they could potentially mean going forward with six months to go to the World Cup. Kyle Mears dropped for the last T20 international. Johnson Charles brought in and earlier in the series, Shimmer and Hepmeyer out of the squad and Sherfinn Rutherford coming in and doing quite well too. And while we lament what is happening with the Test Match team, I think what you're seeing in the T20 international team is healthy competition for places. No one should feel that they have a divine right to replace it any West Indies team because it surely requires a level of competitiveness and that hunger to perform for the West Indies or even just for yourself, even if you want to be selfish about it. So, Shimmer and Hepmeyer, given the opportunity, never mind the criticisms that look, he failed in the one day, why pick him in the T20? Give him an opportunity. He didn't deliver. Someone else steps in. Same thing with Kyle Mears. Yes, Kyle Mears is a growing force in the T20 game. He is still not to be a big success in the IPL. But again, that doesn't guarantee you a spot in a West Indies team if you don't perform, if you don't deliver. And Johnson Charles brought back in had a good innings yesterday. So once more, you're seeing a situation which you want in West Indies, which you want across all formats, that one, the West Indies starting to win, more than lose, based on the evidence of 2023, we'll see how things go in 2024, but also a healthy competition for places where, and I understand where people are saying that you can't really perform if there's a sword over your neck, a guillotine over your neck. But I don't think it's like that. I think basically the message is that if you perform, you'll be given a fair run. If you don't, you shouldn't be surprised if someone else waiting in the wings gets an opportunity. Yeah, and some may see this as a fringe issue really, but I heard quite a bit of talk throughout the course of the series, I guess about some of the fringe bowlers, not seeing much if any of them throughout the course of the series, the lengths of a Sherfinn, Rutherford, Roveman, Powell himself. I don't think, I think Rutherford probably bowled one over in the series. Roveman, Powell didn't bowl at all in the series, and the captain really depended on, I guess what you would call the front line bowlers for the campaign. Do you think they should be looking more at involving the likes of a Rutherford and a Roveman, Powell himself, or can the quote unquote front line bowlers get the job done, you think? It's an interesting balancing after encounter, because it could happen one day that one or two of your front line bowlers are carted all over the place, and you're left looking for an option, and that option would not have had many opportunities. You mean like the fourth D20? So precisely, but these things happen. And again, I don't think there's any evidence anywhere in the world to show that, especially in the T20 format, that it's all dominance, even if you have the best players available to you. And that's why you keep your powder dry by looking at some other options. But I could understand why you would be limited in giving opportunities, because you want to give your front line bowlers enough work. Remember, we're talking four overs. Four overs in the fullness of things really isn't a lot. And therefore, it requires you in those four overs to work out all that is required to the terms of the pitch. As we saw yesterday, where the spin is taking over to realize that look short of a length, there's trouble because you're going to stand up and they will be smashed to all parts. So there are many different elements to it. And you want to give your front line options as your bowlers. In the same way, you'll give your front line batters those options as well. You want to ensure that they exercise every opportunity in different conditions to be able to meet those challenges. Yeah, I asked you this question after a test match performance earlier this year about Gurakesh Moti and whether he could be the premier spinner for the West Indies in all formats of the game. You've had about eight, nine, 10 months more of seeing him. And in all formats as well, what's your take on Gurakesh Moti now? Well, I think he's top of the tree right now in the West Indies context. But again, the enormous challenge is going to come in Australia in just a few weeks time. But this is what you want to see. You want to see our West Indies cricketers excelling across formats. We had the situation where last year when he made his test debut, he was picked for the first test, left out for the second test against Bangladesh on a Paces pitch in St. Lucia. And I was making the point then, as I continue to make, that if you're going to treat bowlers, especially spinners, as only spinners who can play when it's not favoring the fast bowlers, then you are limiting the opportunities for that bowler to grow. We can see it in the evidence of other countries. Nathan Lyon is a classic case in point with the fact that he is so much of a key element to an Australian team in any test match conditions that he's going to play. And now we have, you've got good occasion Moti excelling across formats. You've got Anakil Hussain who also wants opportunities in different formats. And you also hear the discussion of Ricardo, well, you can't play two left-arm spinners, you know, why? If they're excellent bowlers, why not play them? England have two wrist spinners in their team. You don't hear people say, well, you know, you can't play two swing bowlers. You can't play two C bowlers. If you've got quality bowlers, whatever the style, surely they merit selection. So again, Anakil Hussain, they feel affronted that no good occasion Moti has moved ahead of him when we're talking about playing across all formats. And that's the challenge for Anakil Hussain. Yeah, the one thing I will say for us is that I believe that there are times when we should consider playing three spinners in the T20 format of the game, especially on some of these Caribbean pitches. So whoever is saying two is too much. Yeah, they have a problem because there are times in this series when I feel we could use a third, especially because gone are the days when you had a Karl Hooper or Chris Gale and Marlon Samuels, a top order batsman who could also provide some spin bowling doesn't exist in this setup. So that's that. Fazz, thanks very much. We appreciate it. And we look forward to chat to you after the holidays because we will be going on a well deserved break of some sort. Well, hopefully you'll enjoy that break. And in the meantime, I'll sharpen the axe. So good time to take a break. We'll be back with more.