By Royston Alkins
Beaten badly by home team and arch rivals Barbados Pride in their opening Zone B match of the Cricket West Indies (CWI) regional Super50 one-day tournament Tuesday at the Kensington Oval, Guyana Jaguars will look to keep their hopes alive of a semi-final spot when they take on Jamaica Scorpions today.
The locals lost their opening game by a whopping margin of 145 runs in a game where they sorely missed Shivnarine Chanderpaul who was reportedly out through injury.
And while Chanderpaul’s absence can be blamed for the team’s inability to chase down the 302-7 made by the Pride batsmen, the bowlers simply have no excuse for allowing the Bajan batsmen to run rampage even though they had home court advantage.
The team will need to quickly forget that sorry opening round performance and get back to the drawing board if they are to bounce back against the Jamaica Scorpions in today’s encounter.
They will know that toppling the men from the Land of Wood and Water will be no easy task but must understand that it is a job that has to be done. Jamaica, who were schooled by the students from the Combined Campuses and Colleges team in their first game also Tuesday, has in their team, a number of match winners, players with international experience who are just as unpredictable and inconsistent as the Jaguars which should make the contest an interesting one.
They will be heavily dependent on Jerome Taylor and skipper Nikita Miller with the ball and youngsters Brandon King, Rovman Powell, and test batsman Jermaine Blackwood with the bat.
Guyana will be hoping that young Shimron Hetymer, who looked nonchalant in his brief stay at the crease Tuesday fires at the top to give the innings some impetus.
The team should welcome back veteran Chanderpaul who was out with a neck injury in the first game, to give support to skipper Leon Johnson and the rest of the middle order.
The Guyana players must tighten up in all three departments if they are to be taken seriously as title contenders. They dropped century maker Kraigg Braithwaite before he reached 50 and the bowlers, apart from Steven Jacobs, did not seem to know which lengths to bowl to.
The batters surprisingly looked at sea against the spin of Ashley Nurse and Sulieman Benn and allowed wickets to fall in heaps by not looking for big partnerships.
Skipper Johnson, who played a lone hand with the bat, must have had a long team meeting in the dressing after Tuesday night’s shattering defeat. Today’s clash against the Jamaicans, will be most important one for both teams who both lost their opening matches.
The game which is set to bowl off at 13:30 hours, will be closely followed by disgruntled fans and pundits alike as a loss in today’s match will leave the Jaguar’s chances of qualifying for the semis in serious threat.
Guyana’s spinners, who bowled too many loose deliveries, can take a few lessons from Nurse and Benn who varied their pace nicely, while consistently troubling the Guyanese by hitting good areas. The presence of Devendra Bishoo and Veerasammy Permaul must be felt as it’s a necessity to support inform off-spinner Steven Jacobs if Guyana is to contain a strong Jamaican line up.
Before the team’s departure, Johnson alluded that the team needs to play together and pick up the slack for each other as an important ingredient for success. This is something they didn’t do against the Pride and should look to execute against the Scorpio. To date, the two teams have met on twenty (20) occasions with Guyana winning on ten (10), and losing to the Jamaicans nine (9) times with one (1) abandonment.
