Rain puts damper on women's tournament

The West Indies Women's Cricket Championship received a knock- out blow yesterday. Following the rain-hit round-robin League competition which was won by Trinidad and Tobago, the knockout segment, which was scheduled to bowl off on Tuesday, has been aborted.

Persistent rainfall on Tuesday forced the two quarter-final matches slated for the Wayne Daniel Pavilion, Brereton and St Catherine Club in St Philip, to be abandoned without a ball being bowled. The island-wide rain also left the two grounds in St Thomas - at Bridgefield and the Lester Vaughan School - where the semi-finals were due to be played, very soggy and unsuitable to cricket.

As a result, the tournament's organising committee, chaired by Barbados Women's Cricket Association's president Jeff Broomes, met with the officials of the six participating teams around noon yesterday and decided to abort the tournament. "The knockout competition was to be played over three days but rain washed out the first two days so it didn't make sense having a final," Broomes said.

Before the meeting with the teams, there were reports that the teams were not happy with a decision to eliminate Jamaica and St Vincent and the Grenadines and hand St Lucia and Grenada semi-final berths following Tuesday's wash-out. It was alleged that two of the teams refused to get into the bus to take them to the match venue yesterday.

Broomes said all six teams would now be engaged in a few limited-overs matches at the 3Ws Oval, Cave Hill Campus, which was to host the final.

Barbados, who were the defending knockout champions, finished second in the league after three of their matches ended in no-results. "While we are disappointed that the rain intervened, you can't question God but we still saw some positive things and had a good competition," Broomes said.