Omari Banks performs live

After he hung up his boots around 2012, former West Indian Test cricketer Omari Banks ditched his short-cropped hair for dreadlocks, picked up the guitar and turned his attention to his other lifelong passion — reggae. While this newspaper was the first to report this development back in 2013, music had always been in the Anguilla native's DNA. His father, Bankie Banx, is one of the earliest pioneers of the genre in the Eastern Caribbean, and Banks was thus surrounded with music in his formative years. He has the fondest memories of joining his dad on stage during a concert in Italy when he was all of five years old, though he can't recall the name of the song they had played. "I just remember the moment," he tells us ahead of his gig in the city, after making his musical debut in India in Pune, where Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo had surprised the crowd by joining him on stage.