West Indies: Nortel Championship - Change 'May Be tricky' (18 Jul 1998)

18 July 1998

Nortel Change 'May Be tricky'

Haydn Gill

A PLAYING CONDITION which is being introduced to the regional scene for the first time during the Nortel limited-overs championship could prove to be challenging, according to one of the few West Indians of this generation who has played under the rule before.

Barbados captain Marlon Graham and his vice-captain Jason Haynes, both recently back home from cricket scholarships in England, are the only two players in this tournament who have played the shortened version of the game with the proviso that a second day can be set aside for the continuation of a match in the event that elements intervene.

With so much rain around, officials, showing some sense of imagination, have understandably added a playing condition which was used in the first three World Cups in England and is widely practised in the United Kingdom.

The common practice in the Caribbean is to use the reserve day for a replay of the match, but the clause in this case states that matches will continue in the event that both teams have not batted the minimum number of overs to constitute a match.

Graham, who experienced the rule regularly while playing for Kings School in Nottingham, said the vast difference in conditions from day to day presented the major challenge.

Some days you play under one set of conditions and sometimes you come back the next day to totally different conditions. I am accustomed to that, but the team may be affected by it, he told The SUN on Saturday.

Some days you batted on a very good wicket with a dry outfield and it was easy.

You came back the next day and the outfield may be damp, the covers may have sweated and the pitch is fresh. It was difficult. You could be 70-odd overnight and look like a novice the next day. The change of conditions can be very difficult.

All of the teams would have come here prepared for a three-day competition, but now the weather has taken care of that, Graham said he believed his team should make the transition to the One-Day game.

I don't think that it will affect the team physically because the three-day competition is a lot harder, said the former Combermere schoolboy who was Barbados leading run-scorer last year.

Mentally the guys have to say away with the three-day game, this is a One-Day competition.

Most of the team would have had recent One-Day cricket in the CIBC Schools League, while Graham and Haynes had a heavy diet of it in England.

Asked why he thought the three-day game was harder, the captains response was: It is longer, a lot longer. If you are fielding, there is no guarantee that you may bat that day. You may have to field for 90 overs and sometimes more. In a One-Day game, you know you field for 50 overs and bat for 50.

The new format of this year's three-day competition made it even more difficult because six matches (18 days) were packed into a period of 23 days.

After idling for most of their trip, Barbados had their first meaningful net session for sometime on Thursday evening at Queens Park Oval.

To further enhance their build-up for Mondays opening match against the Leeward Islands, they will be a warm-up match against the same opponents today at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)