Red Stripe Bowl: One more embarrassment (23 October 1998)

23 October 1998

Red Stripe Bowl: One more embarrassment

Tony Becca

Last weekend's fiasco at Kaiser when Trinidad and Tobago were declared the winners of the semi-final match against the Leeward Islands one evening and then told the following morning that in fact they had lost it will haunt Jamaica's cricket administrators for a long time - probably even longer than the abandoned Test match at Sabina Park earlier this year.

Due to early morning rain, the match was reduced from 50 overs per side to 41, and after dismissing the Leeward Islands for 174, Trinidad and Tobago were 137 for five off 31.3 overs when, obviously believing they had done enough to win the game, they accepted an offer for badlight.

The Leeward Islands, however, also believed that they had won it, and after a 20-minute meeting involving match referee Hugh Perry, umpires Thomas Wilson of Jamaica and Eddie Nichols of Guyana, standby umpire Basil Morgan of Montserrat, and JCBC assistant secretary Brian Breese, Trinidad and Tobago were declared winners.

According to the formula used, at 32 overs Trinidad and Tobago needed to have been at 136.07 runs to win the match. What they really needed at that stage was 148 runs.

The Leeward Islands then made a protest claiming that the wrong formula was used, at a meeting called by JCBC president Jackie Hendriks on Sunday morning, the umpires admitted that the wrong formula was used and the decision was over-turned.

The condition of the pitch at Sabina Park was an embarrassment. The fiasco at Kaiser, however, was more than that: it was a disgrace - for the simple reasons that there are only two ways to determine the winners of a limited-over match which does not run its full course, and that apart from the complicated calculation involved in the second, it should be easy to decide which one to use.

While there could have been reasons, acceptable or not, for the condition of the pitch at Sabina Park - reasons such as bad clay, excessive rain, and not enough time to prepare it, there can be none for what led to Trinidad and Tobago being awarded the match on Saturday evening.

Formula one deals with a match in which the team batting first bats for the allotted 50 over overs - unless of course it was dismissed early, and the team batting second is unable to do so, and formula two deals with two situations: (a) where the team batting first has batted its full quota of 50 overs, but the number of overs for the team batting second would have to be reduced, (b) where the team batting first had to bat a lesser number of overs and the team batting second would have to bat even less overs.

It is as simple as that. And it should have been for the group - especially as Nichols, one of the West Indies two National Grid umpires, was one of its members.

It was indeed tough luck, but although Nanan said that he and Morgan checked the target at regular intervals, that they used the same formula, and that because Morgan used the same formula he was misguided, Trinidad and Tobago had themselves to blame.

Regardless of what Morgan believed, Nanan, as the manager, and Brian Lara, as the captain, should have known which formula to use, and to continue their protest is a waste of time.

It was a silly mistake by those involved. It was, however, the type of mistake which had to be corrected, and the JCBC did what it had to do.

Next time, however, the Board must ensure that the match referee knows what he is about. Coming so early after the Sabina Park debacle, a mistake like that, on an occasion like that, not only tarnished Jamaica's image once again - it also left many Jamaicans embarrassed.

Source :: The Jamaica Gleaner (https://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/)