Tony BeccaTony Becca
JAMAICA'S DREAM of winning the 2004 regional limited-overs cricket tournament ended in disappointment at Bourda on Sunday.
Considered one of the two top favourites to go all the way at the start of the tournament, Jamaica will not even be in the semi-finals which will be contested by Barbados, the Windward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and defending champions Guyana.
In a low-scoring first round in which all six teams played each other with the top four moving into the semi-finals, in a first round that produced some close and exciting matches with no team winning more than three of their five matches, Jamaica ended in fifth position one place above the Leeward Islands.
For a team that went into the tournament bubbling with confidence and expecting to win, for a team that was fancied by many to win, that was a disappointing performance.
And remembering that all the teams played on the same pitches, that Jamaica played three matches at Bourda, the Test venue, and lost all three, and that it was the same set of umpires that officiated in all the matches, no excuse, no talk about slow pitches and umpiring decisions should be accepted by the Jamaican fans.
The fact, the reality is that Jamaica played some poor cricket, and although such is the game that they could have recovered to win the tournament had they survived, they would have been fortunate had they made it to the final four.
POOR CAPTAINCY
The captaincy was poor. It was difficult, for example, to understand why Jamaica, in a limited-overs tournament played on different pitches, batted first every time they won the toss.
How, in a limited-overs match, with 20 or 25 overs gone, batsmen are sent to bat ahead of batsmen who are better, more experienced and who score faster, and even without mentioning the field-placing when the pressure is on, how Jamaica can lose a match, or matches, without someone like Wavell Hinds even bowling one ball.
The truth, the real truth, however, is that although they allowed Trinidad and Tobago to get away after they were reeling at 127 for seven and 157 for eight chasing 206, although they lost to Guyana who struck 43 runs off the last six overs, Jamaica failed to make it because their batsmen failed to fire.
With batsmen like Christopher Gayle, Hinds and Marlon Samuels, Tamar Lambert, Carlton Baugh Jnr., David Bernard Jnr., Danza Hyatt, Brenton Parchment, captain Gareth Breese and young Xavier Marshall in the line-up, Jamaica were expected to score runs, plenty runs to at least out-bat the opposition.
With scores like 139 versus the Windward Islands and 165 versus Barbados, with a collapse that saw them losing seven wickets for 24 runs when they dropped from 182 for three to 206 all out against Trinidad and Tobago, unfortunately they did not.
BATSMEN DISAPPOINTING
With the exception of Marshall, who recovered brilliantly after failing to score in the first match, all the batsmen were disappointing. In fact, they were so disappointing that without him, it would have been, if that was possible, even more disappointing.
Without Marshall, Jamaica probably would not have won a match. They certainly would not have scored 200 runs on any occasion.
What is disappointing is that it cannot be that these Jamaicans cannot bat. One only has to look at Gayle on his day, Hinds on his day, Samuels on his day, and at
others like Lambert and Baugh on their day to know that they can bat.
As a few have been saying for so long, however, as indicated by their performance against the Windward Islands and again against Trinidad and Tobago when so many batsmen were caught swinging wildly and when three batsmen were run out, it therefore must be something else either a lack of pride in performance or a lack of discipline.
Regardless of what they may say, regardless of who are paid to play the game, Jamaica's cricketers, most of them, are simply not professionals, and remembering that it takes only one careless or reckless stroke for a batsman to be on his way, most times it shows up when they are batting.
