Barbados whip T&T to take Regional Four-Day title

Barbados registered their first first-class triumph in six seasons, winning by an innings and 22 runs against Trinidad & Tobago despite a fighting 140 from Lendl Simmons while his team was following on. That also meant that for the first time in six years, the competition has not been won by Jamaica, who lost out to T&T in the semi-finals this season.

T&T, coming into the third - and eventually final - day on 140 for 4, were only able to add 30 runs before Denesh Ramdin fell for 18. Lendl Simmons and Ramdhin had put on 83 runs for the fifth wicket, in an effort to reduce the deficit after T&T's first innings flop for 110.

The wicket of Simmons followed soon after with the score on 195. Simmons, who had been batting on 111 overnight, was caught-behind off the bowling of Jonathan Carter. Miguel Cummins and Javon Searles then took out the remaining batsmen. They ultimately fell 23 runs short of making Barbados bat again.

Kraigg Brathwaite of Barbados ended up the second-highest run scorer in the competition with 577 runs in eight matches, while their offspinner Ashley Nurse finished third-highest wicket taker with 45 wickets in eight.

Hendy Springer, the Barbados coach, was delighted with his team's performance. "It feels great to win a trophy, after the kind of start we had to the season [Barbados began with a loss to Jamaica], and to look around and see some of the young players improve, which is the definition of success for me.

"We had guys that were willing or fight, willing to prove their worth and that was important. Players have come with higher skill levels than the ones we had this season, but the fight that they showed day in, day out was what made the difference.

This team is different to others that I have coached over the years since it does not include a number of players that have represented West Indies at the higher levels. When I first started coaching Barbados back in December 2000, we had players like Roland Holder, Philo Wallace, Sherwin Campbell, Hendy Bryan, Adrian Griffith, Floyd Reifer to name a few - a number of players that had represented West Indies and it was much different then. This season we had more first-class players than West Indies players, and it was good to see those players come to the fore as well."

T&T captain Denesh Ramdin was disappointed with his side's batting, and hoped to rectify this performance for the future. "It was an up and down season and we had to keep chopping and changing players, some going and some coming, and we never got that balance right in our batting department. We were always struggling to put 200 runs on the board but our bowlers had done it throughout the season for us. This is one of the few times we have gotten over 220 runs for the season. It is something we have to think about and we have to go back to the drawing board.

"The top five or six batters need to come to the party. They didn't come consistently as we wanted them to in this tournament. Well played to Lendl Simmons for getting a hundred this game, but having to come from 260 behind was a hard task to overcome.

"I believe it is a mindset that the players have to change. We have to learn to stand up and bat longer. Players are sometimes playing too many shots and not batting as long as they should. To get hundreds, you need to bat at least two and a half sessions and we find guys are trying to get the runs all in one session. Hopefully, they can all learn from this experience and learn as fast as possible. Next year will be right around the corner and we will need to bounce back strongly."