Trinidad and Tobago and West Indies cricket captain Brian Lara almost certainly did not have a happy Christmas. He is unlikely to have a happy new year either.
Lara's head has almost certainly been hot with thoughts of whether, in the wake of repeated disasters befalling his team on their current South African tour, he will remain king of West Indies cricket for much longer.
On this November 1998 to February 1999 tour, the ghosts of New Years past seem to have come back to haunt the 29-year-old batting icon.
In January of 1993, Lara had produced a mammoth 277 against the might of Mark Taylor's Australia to stop the home side going 2-0 up in the five-Test series. It sparked the self-doubting Caribbean side back to their best and they won the next two Tests to run away against the odds with the series.
Last year in January, in a transfer of power largely botched by Pat Rousseau's West Indies Cricket Board, the Trinidad and Tobago captain replaced his Jamaican counterpart at the helm of the regional team. As January 1999 opens its sleepy eyes, the West Indies have already suffered three humiliating Test defeats at the hands of Hansie Cronje's South Africans and the anti-Lara critics are still saying ``We told you so''-no longer sotto voce. So there may well be perhaps muted calls for the skipper's swift replacement as leader of the West Indies.
It had little to do with the fact that T&T were eliminated from the Red Stripe Bowl final in controversial circumstances and the skipper saw it fit to lead his team in a protest appearance at the venue on the morning of the knockout final between Guyana and the Leewards. The criticisms then were of the WICB and match inspector Hugh Perry whose ruling had awarded the semifinal to T&T on a better run rate after bad light had stopped the match at the Kaiser Sports Club in Jamaica.
It had little to do with the four-wicket loss suffered by the Lara-led Windies in the final of the Wills International Cup in Dhaka when they seemingly had the match against South Africa well in hand.
What really brought the snipers to the parapets was the week-long impasse that developed between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association. Lara and vice-captain Carl Hooper failed to heed a WICB injunction to go directly to South Africa and were summarily dismissed by the Board.
WICB boss Pat Rousseau eventually dismissed the entire affair as a ``misunderstanding'', declining to resign.The pair were subsequently reinstated and the all-important South Africa tour went on-disastrously for the Windies.
The first three Tests were lost and the tour was over a month old before Lara's men registered their first tour win.
As January loomed on the horizon, Lara returned to his best form but too late to save the series. It remains to be seen whether the one time Prince turned King can save his throne by avoiding an unprecedented-and most ignominious-whitewash.
Not even the Ian Bishop-led West Indies ``A'' team's 2-0 and 2-1 triumphs in the ``Test'' and One-day series respectively in India or SM Jaleel and Company Limited's generous US$42,000 four-year sponsorship of the regional competition, unsponsored in 1998, could lift the pall of gloom that currently envelops West Indies cricket.
And there was hardly any morale-boosting news in sport to brighten up the last quarter of the year.
First there was the historic but unfortunate international ban imposed on cyclist Mike ``Tyson'' Alfred. Despite the CAC bronze medallist's vehement denials that he had ever used any form of performance-enhancing drug, Alfred was banned by the Commonwealth Games Committee after he tested positive for Norandrosterone at the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur. The T&T pedaller will not be able to represent the country at the next Games in Manchester in 2002.
Football provided some cheer with Trinidad and Tobago's Under-17 players qualifying for the Concacaf playoff series in El Salvador with a valiant come-from-behind effort in the Caribbean Football Union leg of the competition staged right here in Trinidad.
After going down 3-0 to unfancied Bermuda in the opening game of the series, T&T fought back to beat Barbados and the Netherlands 2-0 to clinch the lone berth.
Despite the success, however, coach Muhammad Isa was relieved of his responsibilities and a new technical expert will be in charge when the team travels to El Salvador.
United States-based Stern John finished the Major League Soccer season as the MLS's leading scorer with 26 goals and earned himself a pick on the AT&T Best XI selection.
Former T&T skipper Russell Latapy also finally settled in Scotland, joining compatriot Anthony Rougier at Hibernian.
On the domestic scene, Joe Public, a club in only their third year of existence, lifted the Craven A Semi-Professional Football League and Caribbean Football Union Club Championships titles.
However, for the first time in many years, no team proved good enough to capture more than one of the major titles, with CL Financial San Juan Jabloteh (FA Trophy), Defence Force (League Cup) and Courts Caledonia AIA (Big Four) sharing the spoils.
The South Zone emerged as a force in the Secondary Schools in 1998. St Benedict's beat Princes Town in the national Intercol final but Naparima came out winners in the league competition.
Tobago's Signal Hill proved too much for North champions Mucurapo in the final of the re-formatted ``Big Seven'' competition. For yet another year East Central, where El Dorado were top of the pile, could make no impression on the national scene.
In rugby, Caribs won the inaugural national Sevens Championship while AfriCanada won the International tournament. And T&T lost their Caribbean title to Bermuda in October.
In horse racing, it was not all smooth sailing as the Caribbean's richest race, the high-profile US$255,000 Clásico Internacional del Caribe which was staged here for the first time, ended in controversy. Venezuelan colt High Security beat out Panamanian rival Evaristo in a hard-fought stretch duel only to be demoted to second when the stewards ruled on a protest lodged by Evaristo's jockey, Jesús Barría.
In the field of athletics, things seemed to be-at last-looking up as the year ended. The positive note came with the entrance on the National Amateur Athletic Association scene of the Francis Williams-Smith-led New Visionaries.
Williams-Smith and Ken Doldron finished in a deadheat at the end of the NAAA's general election. When Doldron withdrew, Williams-Smith replaced outgoing president Jules Bernard as head of the body and-if he is to be taken at his word-will be charting completely new directions for the umbrella body in the new year.
There was much talk as well about a new national policy for sport and some more talk about the coming of a Cricket Academy. Sport enthusiasts are hoping that the new year will bring, if not less talk, at least some action to support the continuing discussions and restore the spectators' increasingly shaky faith in those charged with the responsibility of running the country's various sports.