Staff writer - Nyasha Watson
I would like to first of all say congratulations to the Trinidad and Tobago cricket team for once again winning the Caribbean 20/20 tournament. The only surprise would have been if they had not won the tournament. When it comes to 20/20 cricket, the Trinidad and Tobago squad is a cut above the rest.
I was left in complete shock when I heard the captain of the Jamaican team remarked that the strength of his team lies in the bowling department. Um… no no and with the exception of the Trinidad and Tobago squad all the other teams can recite the same statement.
It has often been said that cricket is a batsman’s game; well when it comes to 20/20 cricket there is no avoiding that fact. Thus if teams are going to focus more on their bowling attack in this form of the game then they are definitely going to be trouble.
I was most annoyed with the amount of low scores that teams were producing and the frequency in which bowlers were celebrating because they had gotten a wicket. This goes against the very fundamentals on which T20 cricket was built.
And this is precisely what separated the Trinidad and Tobago team from the rest of the teams. Their strength was in their batting and I am not only talking about Kieron Pollard. But their entire top order batsmen were capable of tearing any bowling attack apart.
In saying that, I do not mean that the bowling department must be ignored. I will once again allude to the Trinidad team who had a balanced team; they not only had an imposing batting line up, but they had a competent bowling line up capable of restricting the opposition. And this is precisely what they did for the majority of the tournament.
Trinidad and Tobago batsman Adrian Bharath
Before I go seeing that we are talking about the Trinidad team, I am not sure what to make of this “warning” that the Trinidad Cricket Board gave to three of its players whose International T20 duties clash with the regional’s four day competition. All I will say is that league cricket is on the rise so the ICC will have to seriously look into criteria that make a player eligible to play for these leagues as against their national or regional team’s duty.
