Trinidad and Tobago simply too good

Tony Becca, Contributor

The Caribbean T20 has come and gone, and to put it simply, Trinidad and Tobago were too good for the field. Led by captain Daren Ganga, Trinidad went to Antigua and Barbuda, and Barbados, took one look at the opposition, and then swept them away.

In fact, it was so easy, it was like taking candy from a baby. Only rain in the match against Hampshire prevented them from coming out with a perfect record.

Trinidad and Tobago defeated the Leeward Islands by 56 runs, Canada by five wickets, and Barbados by 50 runs, in 20-over matches at that, in the preliminary round.

They followed up by blasting Jamaica by eight wickets in the semi-final and by cruising to victory by 36 runs in the final, doing so, on all five occasions, without breaking a sweat.

Their top gun was Lendl Simmons, he smashed 249 runs with a top score of 83 and an average of 41.50 and he was deservedly named man-of-the-series.

To win a tournament, any tournament much more a hit-or-miss tournament like a 20-over tournament, and to win it so convincingly, calls for performance from more than one man, however, and right behind Simmons were Darren Bravo, Samuel Badree, Adrian Barath, Ravi Rampaul, and all their brilliant fielders.

Jamaica's Marlon Samuels scored 253 runs with a top score of 80 not out and an average of 63.25 but, starting slowly, he never led Jamaica the way Simmons led Trinidad and Tobago.

While Trinidad and Tobago were masterful in winning the tournament, and the Windward Islands turned up with an encouraging performance, Jamaica, and the rest of the contenders, including Hampshire and Somerset, who were without some top players, were disappointing.

Jamaica, as usual, started as favourites, but although they finished in third position, one better than last year, they were just as disappointing.

Jamaica lost to the Combined Colleges and Campuses, they lost to the Windward Islands, and they narrowly made it to the semi-finals after winning two matches, losing two matches, tying with Somerset and Guyana on eight points, and qualifying on run-rate.

Jamaica, with three victories and three losses, finished with a 50-50 record, and although it was a T20 tournament, even though the results are usually so unpredictable, although it is more for fun and excitement, and even though the niceties of the game are so often ignored, especially when it comes to the art of batting, it was disappointing.

Aggressive nature

The reasons for the disappointment include the possibility that the right team may not have been selected. It could also be that Jamaica have little experience of T20 cricket, even though it would seem that T20 cricket, the aggressive nature of it, should fit in with the people's natural flair.

Cricket is cricket, and once you can play cricket, you can play cricket. There is a difference, however, between four or five-day cricket, one-day cricket, and T20 cricket.

Some people, depending on their talent or on their athleticism, depending on their preference, and depending on their personality, are better at one than the other two, some people are better at two than the other one, and only a few, a very few, are good at all three.

To bat for 10 overs, or 15 overs, is a far cry from batting for one day, or two days, and that is why some teams, most teams, make changes between their four or five-day teams, their one-day teams, and their T20 teams.

There were times in the tournament when Jamaica were batting and they were 40-odd after 10 overs with the batsmen playing correctly down the line without scoring.

There was no urgency. It seems as if nobody wanted to to take a risk. Jamaica's batting attempted to be cultured when it needed, like Trinidad and Tobago, somewhat like the Windward Islands, to throw a little caution to the wind.

Practice, however, makes perfect, and it is also possible that the main reason for Jamaica's failure was the lack of T20 cricket at the club level. With T20 cricket seemingly here to stay, the time has come for a T20 competition, to become a regular club competition.

From all appearances, even with the sight of empty stands at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, the Caribbean T20 was reasonably well supported, and that was good, especially with the number of women and children in attendance.

We hope that it will go from strength to strength, that it will become one of the big T20 attractions around the world, that it will attract more visitors to the region, and that, even if in itself it will not produce batsmen like calibre of Garry Sobers or Rohan Kanhai, Viv Richards or Brian Lara, even if it does not lift the standard of West Indies cricket in Test matches, it will mark the revival of the game in the West Indies.