THE PITCH at the 3Ws Oval for the final of the WICB regional four-day competition has been given a failing grade by one of the players who exploited the conditions to his advantage.
Odean Brown, a tall leg-spinner who grabbed seven wickets in the match and helped Jamaica sweep to an emphatic eight-wicket victory over hosts Combined Campuses and Colleges inside two days, described the surface as not being up to scratch for first-class cricket.
The pitch offered the spinners considerable turn and bounce and neither team came to grips on it in a match that failed to produce a single half-century and contained modest scores of 112 and 122 by first-time finalists CCC.
“As a spinner you would love to see turn and bounce, but overall, for the cricket, it was poor in terms of the final when you set a pitch like this,” Brown said in the dressing room amidst celebrations among his Jamaica teammates.
“I don’t know what CCC were planning but I guess it did not work.”
Throughout the season, CCC depended heavily on the spin twin combination of Ryan Austin and Kavesh Kantasingh, who emerged as the tournament’s two leading wicket-takers.
Off-spinner Austin, who ended with a season-high 44 wickets and left-arm spinner Kantasingh, who claimed 42 scalps, each grabbed four wickets in Jamaica’s first-innings response of 225.
Jamaica, however, countered CCC’s spin threat with a pair of spinners of their own who combined to share 11 wickets between them and help Jamaica romp to a fourth successive regional first-class title.
Brown, who won the Man-Of-The-Match award, grabbed three wickets in the first innings and took four in the second when left-arm spinner Nikita Miller also claimed four.
Experienced CCC player/coach Floyd Reifer, speaking before Brown gave the pitch a poor grade, saw nothing untoward about the track, instead pointing to the shortcomings of the batsmen.“
The pitch was not difficult to cope with. It was just a matter of the batsmen applying themselves and being a bit more patient,” Reifer said.
“That seems to be a problem in West Indies cricket overall. If you look around in regional cricket, you don’t see guys batting a whole day anymore. It is a major concern for our cricket.”
In the final, 23 of the 31 wickets fell to the spinners through a variety of methods.
A count by NATIONSPORT showed that nine of the victims fell to catches close in from defensive strokes, three had their defences breached and more than ten fell to loose strokes, including three who gave catches in the deep.
