WI Domestic Season

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JHunter
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Re: WI Domestic Season

Post by JHunter »

cricket_22001 wrote:I was going to hold off until after this round was finished as there is a break until March. I was interested to see how many internationals/BPL players appeared.
Forgetting the usual 20/20 professionals (I'm sure I read last year Lendl Simmons did retire from FC cricket when he appeared in the Aussie BBL), let's see how many commit to the WI domestic scene with no international cricket till March.
When you say no international cricket you mean no domestic T20 cricket elsewhere in the world until March?

Because there is the BBL until the end of January (There are four West Indians in the BBL - Dwayne Bravo, Samuel Badree, Kieron Pollard and Andre Russell; however Andre Russell is currently facing an anti-doping trial; Gayle "opted" not to play in the BBL this year, but most likely he was told he wasn't welcome after the fiasco of last year...in any case would be surprised to see him turn out for first-class cricket at this point); South Africa's T20 Challenge ends December 17 (only around 3-4 West Indians in that I think), the Pakistan Super League from February to March 7 (10 West Indians in that), and then the IPL come April 5. So there will be 3 rounds of the FC competition in March in which there are no major T20 competitions elsewhere in the world and for which a lot of the T20 professionals should be available. We will see who shows up. I doubt Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard or Lendl Simmons will show up.
The season started with a whimper. For me, just when you need the highest standard at domestic level, below strength teams competed. Although in the 4th round, several internationals returned. I'm not too sure how many West Indians are part of the Aussie BBL.
Pretty much every season has started with a whimper though. However the performances have improved slightly with each new season.
Anyway, bowling wise, business as usual when you see name like Miller, Shillingford, Permaul, Khan, Cornwall, Warrican & Jacobs at the top of the averages. WI 'A' tourist Keon Joseph is the only fast bowler up there amongst this group & Kemar Roach has useful figures but hasn't ripped sides apart.
The batting is its usual disappointment. 4 centuries in 12 games. But it has one shining light- 23 year old Anthony Alleyne of Barbados. He has 451 runs including a big century & 3 fifties. And this despite a failure in the last round against Guyana. Let's hope he builds on this .Also, glimmers exist in Kyle Hope (brother of Shai) & Jahmar Hamilton. Both were part of the 'A' tour to Sri Lanka & have had a solid season so far. Both have been around a while & Hope is yet to record a FC century.
Indeed. All true. Alleyne and Kyle Hope seem likely to get called up for at least an upcoming A team tour if not full selection to the senior team soon.

Other international or 'A' internationals have useful stats but not breaking records. Blackwood, Chase, Chadrika, Ambris, Campbell, Brooks & Keiran Powell are all thereabouts. Shimron Hetmyer is also in this field & I'm thinking the selectors are hoping he kicks on. Another centurion is Montcin Hodge of the Leewards. He's been around for ages but since coming back to FC cricket last year, he has been in career best form.
Yep. All true. Once again though the fact that this season, like the previous two is double round robin gives all of these guys a chance to get more FC experience and matches under their belt. Prior to the attempted professionalisation this round would have been the penultimate round.
But, for the West Indies in 2016/17, I think you have to worry when the elder Chanderpaul is high in the batting averages & aggregates.
Chanderpaul probably shouldn't have been forced to retire when he did. He hadn't been getting return in international cricket for quite a while but then the same was often true of Gayle, Bravo, Sarwan and many others who were given numerous life-lines. Rumour has it that the board and coach were at odds over Chanders with Simmons thinking Chanders should go and the board not agreeing, but eventually agreeing to it (this was early in Simmons tenure when he was apparently being given more free reign). His returns in domestic cricket have only strengthened my suspicions that he could have still done well internationally if he wasn't forced out when he was.

Anyway, that's water under the bridge. Hopefully his presence in the domestic circuit will provide much needed experience to the younger players in the FC competition.
So, let's see what round 5 this weekend offers. Then a break.
What price when the comp resumes in March, it coincides with the Pakistan tour.
Yep, let's see.

Regarding the Pakistan tour, this is the natural outcome of the scheduling squeeze. Too many of the West Indian T20 players want to play in all the T20 competitions as much as possible which means their priorities begin to dictate the scheduling. At one point the board was even mooting the idea of start the FC competition in what is the rainy/hurricane season in the West Indies to accommodate these....players (I prefer the term "jokers") but that idea thankfully seems to have been thrown out. There was a meeting between the board, players association and players where the board apparently suggested trying to accommodate everyone's interest..I suspect this is the outcome - a long break in the FC competition until March so the T20 professionals can eat all their cake and have it too, plus no international cricket to coincide with the January/February period. End result is that international tours and domestic cricket will clash. That's okay though given there will never be enough months in the year to accommodate playing in all domestic T20 competitions, scheduling a FC competition and scheduling international cricket in just one year. And the clash of the international tour and FC should work in theory as it should give other players a chance to break into the FC competition and widen the pool of potential international players (which is the goal of domestic cricket anyway).

JHunter
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Re: WI Domestic Season

Post by JHunter »

cricket_22001 wrote:I was going to hold off until after this round was finished as there is a break until March. I was interested to see how many internationals/BPL players appeared....

The season started with a whimper. For me, just when you need the highest standard at domestic level, below strength teams competed. Although in the 4th round, several internationals returned. ....

The batting is its usual disappointment. 4 centuries in 12 games. But it has one shining light- 23 year old Anthony Alleyne of Barbados. He has 451 runs including a big century & 3 fifties. And this despite a failure in the last round against Guyana. Let's hope he builds on this.

Also, glimmers exist in Kyle Hope (brother of Shai) & Jahmar Hamilton. Both were part of the 'A' tour to Sri Lanka & have had a solid season so far. Both have been around a while & Hope is yet to record a FC century.
Other international or 'A' internationals have useful stats but not breaking records. Blackwood, Chase, Chadrika, Ambris, Campbell, Brooks & Keiran Powell are all thereabouts. Shimron Hetmyer is also in this field & I'm thinking the selectors are hoping he kicks on. Another centurion is Montcin Hodge of the Leewards. He's been around for ages but since coming back to FC cricket last year, he has been in career best form.
But, for the West Indies in 2016/17, I think you have to worry when the elder Chanderpaul is high in the batting averages & aggregates.
So, let's see what round 5 this weekend offers. Then a break.
What price when the comp resumes in March, it coincides with the Pakistan tour.
Well this round has seen a strong 400+ score already in the Jamaica v Leewards match and it was done on the back of a non-international player. Jamaica has made a score of 461/4 with Brandon King making 150+ and Devon Thomas (of the Leewards, but transferred to Jamaica as one of the two non-local picks) making 70+. Blackwood, Shacaya Thomas and John Campbell all made 50s as well for Jamaica and Hamilton made a century for the Leewards.

King was not in the first three matches for Jamaica if I'm not mistaken (which was odd given how well he has done in club cricket and how highly regarded he is) and he has likely cemented himself into the team with this strong century and the 78 he made in the first innings of the previous match against Trinidad.

Overall this season I think has seen a number of potential players already putting their hands up, more so than many recent seasons when the top performers were almost always players who had been picked for international cricket already like Dwayne Smith, Devon Smith, Chanderpaul, Gayle, Sarwan, etc. At the moment the ones who have been putting in useful and consistent performances (even if they haven't been shattering records) for this year in West Indies A games and the List A and FC tournaments are: Brandon King (bat), Nikita Miller (spin), Montcin Hodge (bat), Jason Mohammed (batting, especially in 50 overs cricket), Kyle Hope (FC and List A batting), Rovman Powell (with bat and ball), Versammy Permaul (spin bowling), Jon-Russ Jaggessar (spin), Delorn Johnson (with the ball, been underperforming with the bat), Rakheem Cornwall , Shimron Hetmyer (bat), Vishaul Singh (bat), Sharmarh Brooks (bat), Anthony Alleyne (opening bat), Roston Chase (bat), Shane Dowrich (bat and wicketkeeping), Shai Hope (bat and wicketkeeping), Sheldon Cottrell (bowling), Roshon Primus (bat and ball), Alzarri Joseph (with the ball), Nkrumah Bonner (bat), John Campbell (opening bat), Shannon Gabriel (with the ball) and Devendra Bishoo (with the ball). Rajinda Chandrika (with the bat), and Jermaine Blackwood (with the bat) are at times showing their potential but not as consistently as needed (especially Chandrika). They are still in the mix though.

I could easily see for instance Alleyne, Kyle Hope, Brandon King, Jason Mohammed (for ODIs), Chase, Dowrich, Permaul, Rovman Powell, Hetmyer, Singh, and Bishoo joining (or rejoining as the case may be) Blackwood, the Brathwaites, Shai Hope, Holder, Gabriel, Joseph, etc on the full international team for tests and ODIs.

JHunter
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Re: WI Domestic Season

Post by JHunter »

Round 5 has been completed, so now it's time to update the stats. There were some poor innings and some good innings, the upshot being that the overall average for each innings is rather middling and not much different from many previous rounds:

2016/17 PCL season:

Round-----Total scores of 250 or more-----Total Innings-----% of 250+ scores-----Total Runs-----Runs/innings-----Highest score-----300+ scores-----400+ scores

1-----3-----12-----25%-----2699-----224.92-----377-----1-----0
2-----3-----12-----25%-----2461-----205.08-----372/6-----2-----0
3-----2-----7-----28.57%-----1397-----199.57-----287/8-----0-----0

BREAK

4-----7-----12-----58.33%-----2873-----239.42-----333/8d-----3-----0

BREAK

5-----2-----9-----22.22%-----2065-----229.44-----550/7d-----1-----1

The average number of runs per innings was brought down by a combination of low scores by Trinidad, middling scores by the Leewards and a heavily rain affected drawn match between Barbados and the Windwards. In fact if we exclude the Barbados/Windwards game altogether the average runs per innings for the other 2 games was actually 260.

Nevertheless, the round was at once encouraging, disappointing and frustrating. The number of scores over 250 was low (just 2) as were the number of 300+ and 400+ scores (1 each). But encouragingly those 2 scores were pretty high (378 and 550/7d). The 378 was scored by Guyana off the back of Shivnarine Chanderpaul who made 143 (I still think they may as well re-select him for international test cricket; at the very least having him in the A team to provide experience to the youngsters might be worth a shot). The 550/7d was scored by Jamaica off the back of Brandon King who made 194. Unlike Guyana though, Jamaica had a number of other notable contributions (for Guyana only Leon Johnson made the only other score of 50+ - he scored 69). For Jamaica, Devon Thomas made 114, opener John Campbell made 88, the other opener Shacaya Thomas made 54 and Jermaine Blackwood made 55. There was another centurion in that match, but he was for the Leewards - Jahmar Hamilton (103). Hamilton in fact was the consistent performer for the Leewards in the match as he scored 45 in the second innings. Another encouraging aspect was that in the Jamaica match the 550 was made mainly off players with no international experience (King and Campbell) and even Devon Thomas only has WI ODI experience rather than test experience.

The frustrating aspect was the rain affecting play. Especially Barbados/Windwards. Not much can be done about rain though until we move towards entirely enclosed stadia (which I don't see happening).

The disappointing aspect was the low number of scores that passed 250. Only 22% of the innings. Admittedly, Guyana's second innings could never have passed 250 as they were chasing a tiny target (it would have required Trinidad to set them a big target to beginwith), but even excluding that one the proportion of innings that saw 250+ scores was still pretty low. Even excluding both innings of the Barbados/Windwards match it still only reaches about a third which is around what one might expect but still disappointing given that Round 4 saw 250+ scores in well over half of all innnings played.

So now there is an extended break. Let's see how results fare come 2017 when the league resumes.

Best wishes to everyone for the New Year (and Season's Greetings where applicable) if I don't drop in before then.

cricket_22001
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Re: WI Domestic Season

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Because there is the BBL until the end of January (There are four West Indians in the BBL - Dwayne Bravo, Samuel Badree, Kieron Pollard and Andre Russell; however Andre Russell is currently facing an anti-doping trial; Gayle "opted" not to play in the BBL this year, but most likely he was told he wasn't welcome after the fiasco of last year...in any case would be surprised to see him turn out for first-class cricket at this point); South Africa's T20 Challenge ends December 17 (only around 3-4 West Indians in that I think), the Pakistan Super League from February to March 7 (10 West Indians in that), and then the IPL come April 5. So there will be 3 rounds of the FC competition in March in which there are no major T20 competitions elsewhere in the world and for which a lot of the T20 professionals should be available. We will see who shows up. I doubt Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard or Lendl Simmons will show up.

Thanks JHunter for this information. When I composed my post, I never saw the full BBL squads & I forgot about the Pakistan Super League.Still, only 10 Windies players in the PSL for a 2 month hiatus in the FC season.
Anyway, after talking up Anthony Alleyne & Montcin Hodge, they both failed in the 5th round. They won't want to talk to me. But they still have very good records to date. And the marvelous performance by Brandon King. Alleyne & King are both under 19 players. And, 4 centuries in the first 4 rounds, then 4 centuries in round 5. The stats by Jahmar Hamilton are increasingly impressive- for the last 2 seasons. Outside his wicket keeping skills, I presume he's on the radar of the selectors even as a batsman only.
I imagine the bowlers are being rested as I note Jason Holder, Carlos Brathwaite(now in the BBL), Cummins, Gabriel, & Bishoo haven't played yet. It was encouraging to see Alzarri Joseph turn up, even though he hasn't got the results.
But, I totally agree with you in the talent being produced. Let's hope it is nurtured accordingly for the benefit of West Indian & world cricket.

JHunter
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Re: WI Domestic Season

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Yes, round 5 was very promising for individual performances with the centuries.

Now the action moves to the List A scene where the six territorial teams have been joined by the Combined Campuses and Colleges, West Indies U-19, an ICC Americas team (composed of one Bermudian and Americans and Canadians of West Indian and South Asian heritage) and Kent.

Interestingly enough, this season of the Super50 tournament sees the pro league teams retaining many of the non-local West Indians from other territories who played for the teams in the first class competition:

Raymond Reifer (from Barbados) - Guyana

Jomel Warrican (from the Windwards) - Barbados

Devon Thomas (from the Leewards) - Jamaica

Nkrumah Bonner (from Jamaica) - Leewards

Sheldon Cottrell (from Jamaica) - Trinidad & Tobago

Roshon Primus (from Barbados) - Trinidad and Tobago

Kyle Hope (from Barbados) - Trinidad & Tobago

Kyle Mayers (from Barbados) - Windwards



and also we've seen some movement towards harmonization of the PCL and CPL squads (or at least the CPL squads influencing the PCL squad picks), probably out of pragmatism as Marlon Samuels (who played for St. Kitts and Nevis Patriots and previously the Antigua Hawksbills in the CPL) was picked for the Leewards squad.

There were also some picks not related either to the first class tournament or the CPL as the Leewards picked up Kevon Cooper from Trinidad and Jamaica picked up Steve Taylor from the USA (but of Jamaican parentage).

It's definitely nice to see the teams continuing to pick out-of-territory players, even while retaining a majority of the squad from local picks.

The first matches have also taken place and I will post about them the next time I do post.

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Re: WI Domestic Season

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Chanderpaul seems to be tearing it up. Centuries in his last few games plus a smattering of 80s and 90s.
Should still be in the West Indies Test team on form... but he's a Kolpak with Lancashire now it seems.

JHunter
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Re: WI Domestic Season

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brmtaylor.com admin wrote:Chanderpaul seems to be tearing it up. Centuries in his last few games plus a smattering of 80s and 90s.
Should still be in the West Indies Test team on form... but he's a Kolpak with Lancashire now it seems.
Yes, he should still be in the team. Didn't like the selectors and coach basically retiring him when they did. At the very least they could have suggested he take a break to regain form in domestic cricket and be given one more run after which if was still struggling then he could retire. But that's in the past now. Still one of my favourite players though.


Now on to the Regional Super50.

We are about halfway through the group stage with 20 matches played and it's been quite an interesting List A tournament. Every team participating except the ICC Americas team have won at least one match. The latest shocker was the West Indies U-19 defeating Kent by 28 runs. The strongest teams up to this point have undoubtedly been Barbados (played 4, won 4) and the Leeward Islands (played 4, won 3 and lost a very close match to Trinidad just now which they really shouldn't have lost as they were chasing 226 and had a 115-run opening stand between Kieran Powell and Montcin Hodge). The other strong/competitive team performances have come from T&T (overall), Jamaica (in all matches except against the CCC), Guyana (against the CCC), Kent (against the Windward Islands) and the CCC (against Jamaica and the ICC Americas).

That Barbados has been doing well in the first class and list A competition augers well. Likewise for Jamaica and the Leewards. Guyana has been struggling relative to their form in the past few years and T&T have been resurgent in the List A this year. Hopefully they will be able to carry over some of that mojo to the second half of the first class season.

It will be interesting to see if this List A competition has the effect of pushing up the scoring rate for the teams once the first class season resumes. I suspect it might do so, at least for the first few rounds.

Ideally though they would have scheduled the Professional Cricket League to a multi-format league with each round consisting of a 4-day match followed by either a 1 day list A match OR a T20 match between the same teams (this format could be alternated, so that you have double round-robin first class and simple single round-robin for the list A and T20 matches; so round 1 would have FC and List A and then round 2 would have FC and T20). Clearly though unless the CPL rights were changed then this kind of format is unlikely to happen and the best that can be hoped for is for a FC plus list A format in each round. That I think would have a positive effect on the scoring rates.

JHunter
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Re: WI Domestic Season

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The Regional Super50 is almost over with the first semi-final having been played. To catch you all up on the action since February 3rd, there have been a few close matches but in quite a few one team won by convincing margins. The ICC Americas and West Indies U-19s performed the most poorly (as could probably be expected given their experience and in the case of the U-19s, their age), losing the majority of their matches, the U-19s even being bowled out for under 120 runs twice. ICC Americas did manage to secure a solitary victory against the Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) team. The CCC team also performed poorly, which is a little surprising given how competitive the team used to be in the past when it participated in the first-class tournament. Perhaps this is due to some of the players being picked by their territorial sides (like Sunil Ambris for the Windwards and Chadwick Walton for Jamaica - both of who are among the top 10 batsmen for the tournament so far) and others moving on from the team due to the completion of their studies. Time will tell if the CCC become competitive again in the future, though I do hope they continue with the team and keep it in the List A competition at least. The CCC has been invaluable in providing opportunities for often overlooked players to shine in domestic cricket, and now some of those who were previously overlooked for the main team and ended up in the CCC are now first picks for their territorial teams.

Kent lost all remaining matches save for the one against the WI U-19s and generally had an underwhelming tour of the Caribbean. The Windwards similarly had an underwhelming tournament and finished like Kent with 3 wins and 5 losses.

The top performing teams were still Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and the Leeward Islands. Guyana were middling with some competitive matches, losing close games to both Jamaica and Barbados. Guyana ended on 4 wins and 4 losses. Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica and the Leewards dominated the competition with Barbados and Trinidad finishing top of their groups with 7 wins and 1 loss each and Jamaica and the Leewards came second in their groups with 6 wins and 2 losses each.

The semi-final set ups were thus Jamaica v Trinidad and Barbados v the Leewards. In the first semi-final, Jamaica blew away Trinidad, scoring 434/4 and then bowling out Trinidad for 142. This was the highest List A score in the West Indies I believe, and almost certainly the highest in domestic List A cricket in the region. Almost half of Jamaica's runs though came from two players who would not normally feature on Jamaica's team; Chadwick Walton (scored 117) would normally be selected for the CCC team as their wicketkeeper and Steven Taylor (scored 88) would normally be playing for the USA (and quite possibly would have featured on the ICC Americas team had he not opted to play for Jamaica). Jermaine Blackwood scored 108 not out to add to the team's already substantial total and likely get himself back into form for international cricket (hopefully). The real star of the match though was Rovman Powell, whose performances will almost certainly lead to his call up to the maroon colours soon, at least for ODIs ((and maybe T20s) and possibly also for Tests. Powell scored 95 and took 5 wickets for 36 runs in 8 overs with 1 maiden. His bowling performance ripped the heart out of the Trinidadian batting line up and he was assisted by Jerome Taylor (3 for 27) and Reynard Leveridge (2 for 31). Only Jason Mohammed (scoring 62 not out) withstood the bowling attack and likely gave himself further credit for future international selection.

After the conclusion of the final I'll give a listing of the best batsmen and bowlers from the tournament, though excitingly so far of the top 10 batsmen (in terms of most runs), 4 have never played for the senior WI team before (Ambris, Mohammed, Hodge and Rovman Powell) and 1 only played due to that strike when Bangladesh toured (Walton). It's good to see the younger players shining and to see such good performances from players who are not on the senior team - gives the seniors notice that their spots are not secured and they need to keep doing their best lest they may be replaced by an up and coming player.

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Re: WI Domestic Season

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Why did Kent play so poorly? Were they fielding a second XI or something?

JHunter
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Re: WI Domestic Season

Post by JHunter »

Good question. Reviewing the squad they sent with the squad that participated in the 2016 one day cup in England, out of the 16 man squad sent to the Caribbean half (8) participated in the one day cup in England (where Kent came second in the South Group with 5 wins and 3 losses and subsequently lost in a quarterfinal to Yorkshire). These eight included Sam Northeast, Sean Dickson, James Tredwell, I. Thomas, AJ Blake, M. Coles, Will Gidman and Bell-Drummond.

It probably wasn't their strongest squad, but it doesn't seem to have been a second XI either. Certainly when half of their mainstays (including James Tredwell!) are playing they shouldn't have done as poorly as that.

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