Caribbean Cricket Podcast · Machel St Patrick Hewitt

Did West Indies have a realistic chance of beating Australia?

·33 min·2 clips

The last batting spots may come down to Hope versus Imlach and Anderson-Philip versus Shemar Joseph.

Mashal St. Patrick Hewitt returns after 80 days traveling around the world, and Santoki opens by saying he needed a reset after the ODI performance in England and the heavy losses there. The Australia tour then becomes the next big test, but not in a clean preview way. The hosts head straight for the selection problem. Brandon King sits at the center of it because his international experience matters, even as doubts hang over his four-day returns and his ability to convert starts. The discussion treats him as a real Test option rather than a simple lock. That opens the door to Kevlon Anderson, whose first-class runs this season make him hard to ignore. Amir Jangoo gets pulled into the same pressure cooker, with the hosts noting how frustrating it must be to be dropped after a 17 average and still have to fight back into the conversation. Casey Carty enters as another awkward case, with his white-ball form part of the debate and the longer-format question still unresolved. The talk stays restless in the best way. A point gets made, then checked again, then tied back to the numbers and the different formats. No one is pretending the West Indies selection picture is settled. The episode keeps circling the same tension between merit, patience, and the split between white-ball production and Test selection. The Australia series sits in the background as the looming reality check. By the end, the bigger question is not just whether the West Indies can handle Australia. It is whether they can settle on a coherent way to pick the people who will try.

As heard by us

A selection debate that feels close to the selectors' room.

The discussion keeps circling the uneasy question of who belongs in the Test side, with Mashal St. Patrick Hewitt and Santoki anchoring the tension between faith, form, and selection.

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Why you'd press play

Listen if you want the West Indies XI debate before Australia asks the hard questions.

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