CARIBE LUMBER BALLPARK—CEO of Nagico Insurances and Chairman of the St. Maarten Cricket Association, Imran McSood believes the batting figures scored during the Nagico One Day Cricket tournament have been very low.
Consequently, McSood believes the coach of the Leeward Islands selection for the regional one day cricket tournament, will have to focus on improving the batting performance of the team if they are to do well in this competition that begins on October 28 in Guyana. "Other than matches against the BVI and the USVI, most of the other matches were pretty low scoring. I think the first game between Antigua and Anguilla was a pretty decent score but even in that game no one went on to get a big, big score," McSood said. Nagico is the main sponsor of the Leeward Islands One Day Cricket Tournament for the last seven years.
However the good news is that the bowlers across the Leeward Islands are doing well, based on McSood’s observation. "The bowing department I think is doing alright. I think there are some decent fast bowlers around; there are some good spinners around, there are some good medium pace and all round players and I think that will hold its own," McSood assessed. The Nagico CEO is pleased with the heightened interest in the tournament from the fans and was impressed with the crowd support at the midweek games. "Those are normal working days and people really came out to watch cricket on these days and people really came out to watch cricket on those days," said McSood.
LOGISTICS
There were some concerns about by Leeward Islands cricket pundits of the frequency of the matches in the tournament where games were played every day by all teams in the respective zones. Besides that, there were also concerns about the logistics in team travel, which saw the St. Kitts team flying to St. Maarten for the first semi-final match on Friday morning—the same day it played St. Maarten. "It’s something that should be addressed," McSood said of the match frequency. "In defense of the Leeward Islands administrators, there was not much option, I think than to cramp the games over one week with matches being played at three different islands. There is a lot of cost involved and if you drag out a tournament over a two week period, there is a lot of cost involved. A lot of the (island cricket boards) don’t have the financial means to cope with this," explained McSood. This means the teams will have to get used to playing matches back to back for this tournament and it’s tough for the players and cricket administrators. "It’s not easy but we have to do what is necessary…at the end of the day, money rules things. Cricket like any other sport, without the financial means, you almost don’t have the sport so we have to take that into consideration," McSood said.
Regarding the late arrival of St. Kitts, McSood believes that team could have arrived on the rest day before the semi-finals (Thursday) just as the Nevis team did to avoid rushing to St. Maarten Friday morning. He does not believe the Leeward Islands Cricket Association (LICA) should be blamed for this. "And maybe you can’t blame totally St. Kitts either because it was difficult to determine who would win and who would play (which semi-final). But you had that schedule a long time in advance and the winner of this zone will play the runner up of that zone. Even if you had to stay one extra night, then everybody should have tried to get here on Thursday. It would have been easier for us well as host country St. Maarten," the SMCA Chairman explained.
ANOTHER SPONSOR
As title sponsor of this tournament, Nagico has committed itself to support this event for the long haul. But McSood does not mind having another sponsor on board to support this event. This he believes will help ease the pressure on the various islands board to host the matches. He was pleased with the local sponsors that came on board for the St. Maarten leg of the matches. "Obviously Nagico as a corporate body, wants to get mileage for their money but at the end of the day we do this mostly for development of the sport and anything to develop the game is fine by me," McSood said.