Tony Becca
TWO months ago when coach Robert Haynes said that Jamaica should and would win the regional four-day cricket title and when selectors Ruddy Williams, Lindel Wright and Courtney Daley said that Jamaica were good enough to do so, even without the players on the West Indies team in Australia, not many believed them.
A few months earlier, Jamaica, at full strength, certainly as far as the batting was concerned, were howling favourites to win the regional one-day tournament.
With the exception of Xavier Marshall, however, their batting never got going, they never even got to the semi-finals, and as far as the fans were concerned, it would have been the same story.
In fact, the consensus was that with batsmen Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels and Marshall out of action for the first half of the home and away contests, it probably would have been even worse.
DECLARED TWICE
Surprisingly, however, that was not the case, and on Monday Jamaica not only won the Carib Beer league, but by piling up 522 in the first innings, by declaring twice, by defeating Barbados by 245 runs shortly after lunch on the fourth day, and by winning it with one round to go, they also did so in style.
According to captain Wavell Hinds, the victory represents a great moment in Jamaica's cricket, and with only seven titles since the first contest back in 1966, success, total success, has been so few and far between that the players, all of them and especially so those who were there at the beginning, deserve special praise.
Lest it be forgotten, in the absence of Gayle, Hinds, Samuels and Marshall, Jamaica won their first five matches for maximum 60 points, after that, with Hinds and Marshall playing three and Samuels one, they secured only 11 points from one first innings loss in a drawn match, one rain-ruined match, one defeat after winning first innings lead.
That means that the magnificent start was the foundation of the victory, and hats off therefore to the following players who, in many ways, performed beyond expectations.
To acting captain Tamar Lambert, who led the team out of some tight spots and to victory; to batsmen Donovan Pagon, Lambert himself, David Bernard Jnr., and Carlton Baugh Jnr., who batted brilliantly throughout while playing some vital innings; to offspinner Bevan Brown, fast bowler Dwight Washington, medium-pacer Bernard, and right-arm legspinner Odean Brown, who all contributed to the early brilliance.
Congrats, especially to fast bowlers Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor and left-arm spinner Nikita Miller who, match after match, bowled Jamaica to victory and who, again lest it be forgotten, came up with some match-winning performances at the bottom of the batting order.
It is said that catches win matches, and but for some brilliant ones by Shawn Findlay, Lorenzo Ingram and Brenton Parchment, some of those early matches may have gone the other way.
It is not often that selectors and coaches are remembered at a time like this, but such were their contribution that Williams, Wright, Daley and Haynes should be and must be remembered.
GOOD SELECTION
Apart from their confidence in the team even before a ball was bowled, apart from trying to convince all who would listen that in batsmen like Pagon, Lambert, Bernard and Baugh, Parchment and Danza Hyatt, Findlay and Ingram, that in bowlers like Washington, Miller, Odean and Bevan Brown, plus Powell and Taylor, Jamaica possessed the players to win the tournament even without the big guns, the selectors, with help from the coach, showed some good sense in putting the team together.
Regardless of what so many of them are now saying, not many fans, for example, agreed with the selection of Miller as one of the bowlers and with Lambert as the acting captain.
