Tony Becca THE REGIONAL Red Stripe Bowl cricket tournament is on the way and with so many young and exciting players on show the fans are looking forward to some lovely cricket in what should be, particularly when it comes down to the semi-finals and the final, a wonderful contest for the title.
According to the format, the top two teams from each of the two zones will move into the semi-finals and looking at the teams in each zone, with the Leeward Islands losing their first two matches in Zone A, it could be, and should be, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago from Zone A, Barbados and Guyana from Zone B.
NOTHING IS CERTAIN
In cricket, however, and particularly in limited-overs cricket, nothing is certain, and remembering that they boast two pacers like Cameron Cuffy and Kenroy Peters, three spinners like Rawl Lewis, Shane Shillingford and Orlanzo Jackson, that there is good support in Fernix Thomas and Darren Sammy, it would be foolish to write off the Windward Islands - just at it would be to scoff at the chances of Antigua and Barbuda who are parading batsmen like Sylvester Joseph, Wilden Cornwall and Ridley Jacobs and bowlers like pacers Adam Sanford and Kerry Jeremy and spinner Anthony Lake.
TOURNAMENT HANDBOOK
The only thing that is certain in Red Stripe Bowl 2003 is this: no team will finish without a point.
According to the playing conditions, as stated in the tournament handbook, the points system, the new points system, gives four points to the winners of a match, two points for a tie or a no-result and one for a loss.
That is strange, really strange.
Obviously, nothing is wrong with four points for the winning team. In every competition, even in West Indies cricket where a tie and a draw were once treated as the same thing, the winning team always gets the most points.
Something, however, must be wrong with a system where two teams play an entire match, one almost won it, and when it is all over, each one gets the same amount of points as each one in a match that was not completed - a match which was probably abandoned even before one ball was bowled.
A tied match certainly deserves more points than a no-result.
If that is bad, giving a point to a losing team is worse. In the normal world of sport, losers get nothing - nothing, that is, except a round of applause from the fans if they played well enough to deserve it.
To make matters even worse, the team that loses a match gets only one point less that a team that ties match.
What should it be? It should be four points for a win, two for a tie and one for a no-result.
There is something else that could happen in this year's Red Stripe Bowl that just does not seem right - something that could detract from the competition and who's to tell, even affect the chances of some of the teams.
PROMOTION SHOOT
The West Indies Board has a promotion shoot in Antigua, it is for one of its sponsors, and it has asked the territories, including Jamaica, to release players who are playing in the Bowl so that they can attend the shoot.
The shoot is scheduled for October 8 to 11, if they go, it means the players will miss three matches, and that cannot be fair - neither to the teams nor to the sponsors of the competition.
Remembering that the Bowl is played every year at this time and that it is a competition run by the board, if the board pulls out any player to attend something like a shoot which, as important as it is, can be organised any time, it simply will be telling the territories, the players and the sponsors of the Bowl that the competition is not really that important and that could have serious repercussions.
NOT REALLY IMPORTANT
If it is not really important, a player does not have to play. As Christopher Gayle did during the Carib Beer Series earlier this year, a player can go and play elsewhere, and the board, if it is fair, should have nothing to say about it.
The same goes for the sponsors of the competition. If, according to the action of the board, it is not important, why should they sponsor it?
Those who came up with such a points system, those who want to pull out players in the middle of one of its own tournament, a big one at that, must have been sitting in the sun too long - either that or they had "one" too many.
