What a ter­ri­ble week for my sport­ing pre­dic­tions. As you all know, I bold­ly pre­dict­ed New Zealand would con­quer In­dia in the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy fi­nal on Sun­day and, well, let's just say my crys­tal ball needs a se­ri­ous clean­ing. The Ki­wis gave it their all, but the ICC-in­stalled 'home ad­van­tage' for In­dia.

Then, on Wednes­day, in the round of 16 of the UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League game, Liv­er­pool, play­ing at home at An­field, took a slen­der 1-0 lead against a very tal­ent­ed Paris Saint-Ger­main (PSG) team at­tempt­ing to qual­i­fy for the tour­na­ment's quar­ter­fi­nals. Af­ter a hard-fought en­counter that went to ex­tra time, it did not go the way of Liv­er­pool hence, you now un­der­stand why it was a ter­ri­ble week.

We will re­turn to those two events lat­er, as pride and place in this col­umn must go to the T&T Red Force Di­vas, who spun their way to vic­to­ry against Bar­ba­dos in the Re­gion­al Su­per 50 Cup Fi­nal. Con­grat­u­la­tions to skip­per Kar­ish­ma Ramharack and her troops on an out­stand­ing tour­na­ment. Ad­mit­ted­ly, when they lost their first match to Ja­maica by 51 runs, I was a bit scep­ti­cal that they could go on to win the tour­na­ment.

How­ev­er, the Red Force Di­vas then un­leashed a spin at­tack that would make a carousel dizzy and won their games con­vinc­ing­ly, de­feat­ing the Lee­ward Is­lands by four wick­ets, de­stroy­ing the Wind­ward Is­lands by nine wick­ets, and hand­ing Bar­ba­dos their on­ly de­feat in the pre­lim­i­nary rounds by five wick­ets. The fi­nal game of the Group Stage ver­sus Guyana was rained out, en­sur­ing the T&T women got in­to the fi­nal against Bar­ba­dos on a bet­ter run rate than Guyana.

Just as in the Group Stage, Bar­ba­dos could not han­dle the spin of the vet­er­an Anisa Mo­hammed and the young­ster, Sama­ra Ram­nath, the West In­dies Un­der 19 skip­per. The Ba­jans to­talled 76 in the Group Stage and did even worse in the fi­nal, mus­ter­ing on­ly 71. Mo­hammed with three scalps, Ramharack with two, Ram­nath with two, and the 15-year-old Am­ri­ta Ram­ta­hal with two did all the dam­age and an easy vic­to­ry by sev­en wick­ets. Be­tween Ram­ta­hal and Ram­nath, these women have more tal­ent in their pinky fin­gers than most of us have in our en­tire bod­ies. What ex­cit­ing prospects they both are!

In ad­di­tion to the team be­ing well led by Ramharack, it was great to see Meris­sa Aguilleira tak­ing up the vi­tal role as coach. How grat­i­fy­ing it was to see a for­mer play­er with the kind of ex­pe­ri­ence Aguilleira has, take up the chal­lenge of be­ing the head coach. This should in­spire many for­mer women crick­eters to tran­si­tion from the role of play­er to coach, as Aguillera has shown it can be done.

An­oth­er im­por­tant as­pect was the num­ber of young­sters in the team per­form­ing at a high stan­dard and this must au­gur well for T&T women’s crick­et and, by ex­ten­sion, the West In­dies. In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, West In­dies Women’s head coach, Shane Deitz, has ex­pressed con­cern with the sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty of bat­ters to spin bowl­ing, as they pre­pare for next month’s World Cup qual­i­fiers in Pak­istan.

On re­flec­tion of the to­tals in the tour­na­ment, he does have a valid point. The pos­i­tive as­pect of this is that the spin­ners are right here in the re­gion, so Deitz can start to work im­me­di­ate­ly on the bat­ters against the spin­ners to cor­rect the faults. For fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of West In­dies’ women crick­eters, it is high time that the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) in­creased the sil­ly three-team tour­na­ment to six teams, as it would ex­pose more re­gion­al women crick­eters to the rigours of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et. Con­grats again to the Red Force Di­vas, keep work­ing hard!

Turn­ing to the men, the Red Force hu­mil­i­at­ed a Bar­ba­dos Pride team chock-a-block with Test play­ers. Well done to Joshua Da Sil­va and his team, we will dis­cuss them lat­er when the tour­na­ment con­cludes, as well as my favourite top­ic, the TTCB (T&T Crick­et Board) Two-Day tour­na­ment.

Now, on­to the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy fi­nal. We all know ICC stands for the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil, but I some­times won­der if it is the 'In­dia's Com­fort Club’. They prac­ti­cal­ly gave In­dia a foot mas­sage and tucked them in­to bed with a bed­time sto­ry about six­es. In­dia was al­lowed to play all their match­es in Dubai, while the oth­er coun­tries had to trav­el be­tween Pak­istan and Dubai. The In­di­ans got ac­cus­tomed to the con­di­tions in Dubai; they stayed at one ho­tel, and they had the back­ing of thou­sands of In­di­an sup­port­ers.

From ear­ly De­cem­ber, In­dia an­nounced that they would not trav­el to Pak­istan be­cause of long-stand­ing po­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween the two na­tions. ICC was now in a re­al mon­key pants. Do they play the tour­na­ment with­out In­dia be­cause they re­fused to play in a coun­try ap­proved for a world tour­na­ment? But, hold on, In­di­an mar­kets make up as much as 80 per cent of the ICC's in­come, so In­dia was not an op­tion for the ICC. The oth­er op­tion was not to play the tour­na­ment in Pak­istan, but it was the first time Pak­istan was go­ing to host a tour­na­ment in 29 years, so that was not an op­tion ei­ther!

In­dia had their way, and they nev­er set foot out­side of Dubai. I won­der, if Afghanistan had said they were not go­ing to Pak­istan to play any games, what would the ICC have done? Well, I could an­swer that. They would have been re­placed by the next high­est-ranked team, and the tour­na­ment would have gone ahead. 'Mon­ey makes the world go round' is the ICC’s mantra, and the Ki­wis had to trav­el 7,000 km to match­es, while the In­di­an play­ers nev­er saw a plane un­til the tour­na­ment was done. In­deed, mon­ey talks and the ICC's de­pen­dence on the In­di­an mar­ket is un­de­ni­able.

Per­haps that was the rea­son I want­ed the Ki­wis to win. In ad­di­tion to them play­ing some good crick­et, I kept think­ing, what an un­fair ad­van­tage was placed on teams meet­ing In­dia. The loss of Matt Hen­ry to in­jury for the fi­nal did not help the cause of New Zealand, and they missed him bad­ly as the first wick­et be­tween Ro­hit Shar­ma and Shub­man Gill con­tributed 105. Who knows if the pacey Hen­ry was there, it might have been dif­fer­ent, but even so, the tour­na­ment seemed tai­lor-made for In­dia to waltz away as win­ners. The fi­nal (and the en­tire tour­na­ment, re­al­ly) felt less like a fair fight and more like a chore­o­graphed dance where on­ly one team knew the steps. Hard luck, Ki­wis!

Then there was Liv­er­pool be­ing beat­en on penal­ties by PSG. To be hon­est, PSG, over the two legs, was the bet­ter team and de­served to go through, but some­times, that does not al­ways work out that way. PSG is a changed out­fit! They have evolved, shed­ding the skin of in­di­vid­ual su­per­stars for a co­he­sive, dy­nam­ic team. They now have a flu­ent, well-oiled ma­chine and work hard to re­gain pos­ses­sion of the ball when they don’t have it.

They are a joy to watch. I ex­pect them to get past As­ton Vil­la in the quar­ter­fi­nal and come up against Re­al Madrid, who were ex­treme­ly for­tu­nate against Atléti­co Madrid in con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances, with Ju­lian Al­varez hav­ing a penal­ty kick ruled out for hav­ing hit his stand­ing foot. PSG should move for­ward and then face the oth­er gi­ants from Spain, Barcelona, in the fi­nal. And there you have it, folks.

Vi­va la PSG, you have the win­ner of this year's UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League. My luck with pre­dic­tions has to change, right? I mean, even a bro­ken clock tells the right time twice a day, and I'm hop­ing I'm about to strike gold.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.