As promised, let’s delve in­to the thrilling sport­ing spec­ta­cles await­ing us in this aus­pi­cious year of 2025 that may in­ter­est sports fans world­wide. Buck­le up, be­cause 2025 is shap­ing to be an ex­cit­ing year for sports!

The beau­ti­ful game

Foot­ball must take pride and place as this is an im­por­tant year for T&T foot­ball. The “So­ca War­riors” face a stern test against Cu­ba in the Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nar­ies home and away, with the home game card­ed for March 25. The ac­tu­al Gold Cup tour­na­ment promis­es fire­works and is sched­uled to take place from June 14 to Ju­ly 6. The World Cup qual­i­fiers re­sume on June 6 vs St Kitts & Nevis here in T&T and on June 10, the So­ca War­riors will face their tough­est as­sign­ment of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers thus far as they do bat­tle with Cos­ta Ri­ca, in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The ju­nior ranks are brim­ming with po­ten­tial, as the Women’s Un­der-17 World Cup qual­i­fiers take place here in T&T at the end of Jan­u­ary, with T&T drawn against Be­lize, Hon­duras, and the US Vir­gin Is­lands. The Women’s U-20 Cham­pi­onships are from Feb­ru­ary 20-25 fol­lowed by the Men’s U-17 World Cup qual­i­fiers, which are sched­uled for March. From March 10-16, the beach soc­cer team will try and qual­i­fy for the 2025 FI­FA Beach Soc­cer World Cup to be held in Sey­chelles in May.

The stick war­riors

In hock­ey, the T&T 5-a-side stick­men will com­pete in the FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup in Croa­t­ia from Feb­ru­ary 3. Good luck to them, and let’s hope this is their “third time’s the charm” mo­ment.

Ten­nis serves up one more year of thrills

In ten­nis, the first of the grand slams, the Aus­tralian Open, be­gan on Jan­u­ary 12 at Mel­bourne Park and ends on Jan­u­ary 26. The big ques­tion is, can the in­domitable No­vak Djokovic, at 37, de­fy “Fa­ther Time” and claim a record-break­ing 25th ti­tle? One thing is for sure, he is go­ing to fight all the way and who­ev­er de­feats him will know they were in a match. I, for one, wouldn’t bet my house on the Serb win­ning an­oth­er ti­tle, as the young guns, Jan­nik Sin­ner and Car­los Al­caraz, are hot on his heels, and Dani­il Medvedev and Alexan­der Zverev lurk­ing in the shad­ows.

On the women’s side, Ary­na Sa­balen­ka is a force to be reck­oned with and will take some beat­ing. Iga Swiatek and Co­co Gauff will pose tough op­po­nents for Sa­balen­ka, but my sen­ti­men­tal favourites are Nao­mi Os­a­ka, Ele­na Ry­bak­i­na and Em­ma Navar­ro. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I do not see any of them win­ning the Open. Os­a­ka, alas, seems to have lost her mo­jo since she had a cou­ple of in­juries and is not the same play­er who de­feat­ed Ser­e­na Williams at the US Open in 2018. Hope­ful­ly, in an­oth­er year or two, she may be able to get her A-game back and be a se­ri­ous threat.

Navar­ro, on the oth­er hand, is a di­a­mond in the rough who is now find­ing her feet at this lev­el. I ad­mire her de­meanour on the court, as she nev­er seems flus­tered with a cool head and a steely re­solve. She has to raise her lev­el to com­pete with the likes of the top three to have any chance of win­ning the Open. Ry­bak­i­na is like a qui­et as­sas­sin and if her serve is on, she can cause a shock like she did when she won Wim­ble­don in 2022.

Crazy year ahead for crick­et

In crick­et, the sec­ond edi­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) Un­der-19 Women’s T20 World Cup is up­on us, and the West In­dies women will be fac­ing In­dia in their first match this Sun­day (Jan­u­ary 19) in host na­tion Malaysia. Al­so on Sun­day, the se­nior women start their One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) se­ries against Bangladesh and they will be look­ing to re­deem them­selves af­ter their re­cent strug­gles against a very tal­ent­ed In­di­an team.

The West In­dies men start their tour of Pak­istan to­mor­row, with the first Test start­ing to­mor­row (Jan­u­ary 17), and the sec­ond Test start­ing on Jan­u­ary 25. West In­dies al­so trav­el to Eng­land at the end of May to play three ODI and three Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al (T20I) games and they should give a bet­ter ac­count of them­selves than in the Test Se­ries in 2023.

The Four-Day Re­gion­al Tour­na­ment starts ear­ly this year on Jan­u­ary 29. Fans should keep their fin­gers, toes, and what­ev­er else they can crossed that their team can some­how, sud­den­ly un­earth some tal­ent. Would the pow­ers that run West In­dies crick­et be able to find some young, ex­cit­ing, tal­ent­ed hid­den gems? Fast bowlers with fire in their bel­lies, good spin­ners, es­pe­cial­ly wrist spin­ners who can ‘turn the tide’, and then last but not least, bats­men who can de­liv­er the goods and go on to be­come in­ter­na­tion­al-class bats­men? I know it may be pie in the sky, but fans de­serve to at least hold out hope for this year.

The world of sports

The World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships will be held from Sep­tem­ber 13 in Tokyo Japan and will be a show­case of ath­let­ic prowess. Let us wait and see who will rep­re­sent T&T. I ex­pect the bright spark again should be Jereem Richards.

For those of you who fol­low Amer­i­can foot­ball re­li­gious­ly, the Su­per Bowl is at Cae­sars Su­per­dome, New Or­leans, on Feb­ru­ary 9. What­ev­er sport you love, there is some­thing on the sport­ing cal­en­dar for you in 2025. Golf, box­ing, horse rac­ing, au­to rac­ing, bas­ket­ball, swim­ming, etc., there is such a wide sport­ing cal­en­dar that it would be im­pos­si­ble for me to give you all the dates of the re­spec­tive sports.

My hope for 2025

As a sports en­thu­si­ast who was brought up in a fam­i­ly that fol­lowed all sports, I en­joy all and I try to watch as many var­ied sports as I can. I’ve al­ways been drawn to the dra­ma, the pas­sion, the sheer ath­leti­cism. Foot­ball, crick­et, and ten­nis have al­ways held a spe­cial place in my heart. I sup­pose it is be­cause I played all three. Though my foot­balling days are long gone, I still play a lit­tle eight-a-side foot­ball, but as the years go by, it be­comes a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult. Luck­i­ly, I have learned to play smarter, and more im­por­tant­ly, I let the ball do most of the work. I thor­ough­ly en­joy the Eng­lish Pre­mier League as it is so un­pre­dictable and com­pet­i­tive and sup­port­ing Liv­er­pool as I do, helps when they are win­ning.

Crick­et? Ah, the mem­o­ries! Chas­ing that elu­sive red ball in the scorch­ing sun is now ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult and I ad­mire those who play on the fete match cir­cuit week in and week out for the fun. But I pre­sume the most im­por­tant part of the game for them is at the end when a pot is bub­bling or the drinks are flow­ing. I wish I was a bet­ter ten­nis play­er. I do en­joy it but I re­alised too late that you have to pick it up be­fore you turn eight years old. Not that I am ter­ri­ble or I would give it up, but I play two hours twice a week so it keeps me fit and thank­ful­ly with my ten­nis part­ner, we do win games.

My hope for 2025 is that we all get to play and fol­low the sports we love, that we stay ac­tive with the teams we play for, and be pas­sion­ate about the play­ers/teams we sup­port. 2025 promis­es to be a year of sport­ing spec­ta­cles. Let’s sup­port our teams, cel­e­brate their tri­umphs, and learn from their set­backs. Let us hope that our lo­cal teams do well, es­pe­cial­ly in foot­ball and crick­et, the 2 ma­jor sports. Let us wish them all the best for 2025!