The closing ceremony had just begun when the shower hit, dampening the proceedings.
In a tournament in which water from above had ruined the hopes of more than one team, the rains were now putting a watery end to a waste of a day for the Leeward Islands.
They had won the battle off the field-in the semifinal protest room. But on it, Stuart Williams and his Leewards team could not secure the triumph that mattered most.
When last man Anthony Lake launched Lennox Cush into the safe hands of Mahendra Nagamootoo and Carl Hooper took the first sip of Red Stripe Beer from the coveted trophy, a well-deserved and popular victory had been won by 52 runs.
On and off the field, Guyana were favoured by the fair-sized holiday crowd to win their sixth regional One-day title.
From the time Clayton Lambert belted his first four in a blistering innings-shaping half-century to the moment Cush flew through the air at backward square-leg to clutch a breathtaking, two-handed effort and dismiss Leewards danger-man, skipper Stuart Williams, the Leewards's grip on their title began to slip.
It was not the kind of display Williams would have expected. But his side, particularly the late-order batsmen, paid the price for indisciplined, desperate ``vooping''-and missing much more often than hitting.
They found the tidy, subduing spin of Neil McGarell (2/37), Hooper (2/22) and Cush (4/37) difficult to negotiate and they lost patience and their wickets to be all out for 174 in 45.5 overs.
Williams's dismissal in the third over set the tone. And despite a sound 77-run second wicket partnership between opener Wilden Cornwall (45, 66 balls, five fours) and the impressive Runako Morton (48, five fours), there was little real oomph in the innings.
This was not the case with the Guyanese.
Although theirs was a classic case of good start bad finish, the Guyanese at least begun very well. Openers Clayton Lambert and Andrew Gonsalves fully justified their captain's decision to take first strike.
By the 22nd over the pair had already posted a century stand that almost made a mockery of the Leewards bowling.
Lambert, trimmer but no less punishing, savaged the early attack. A withering on-drive threatened to put computers out of commission in the press box, while a whipped four over mid-wicket and a solid, swept six powered the West Indies opener to his 50. But with the total on 108 and his score 65, the left-hander, dropped by Dave Joseph on 37, was undone by Hamesh Anthony's throw from the covers.
That route seemed the only way the Leewards were going to make breakthroughs.
And that was the way Gonsalves (41, six fours) went three overs later, Stuart Williams's doing the damage this time with a direct hit from mid-wicket.
Still, with Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Hooper doing the business with a threatening partnership of 41 in some ten overs, the Leewards were drowning. Williams not surprisingly sent out an SOS for Curtly Ambrose.
Coming back in the 25th over for a second spell, the veteran immediately began plugging the holes. Chanderpaul, attempting to hit through the leg side, succeeded only in miscuing to deep cover where Morton took a very well-judged shin-high running catch. That was the 35th over. By the 40th, both Hooper and Keith Semple had joined in, both with the score on 180.
Semple gave a juggling Lake a return catch while Hooper, having smacked the pavilion roof with one of his off-driven sixes, also offered Anthony a return catch when he failed to control a ball that seemed to pop on him.
Guyana were in decline now. And the downward spiral was slowed only by a fighting eighth-wicket partnership of 34 between Nicholas de Groot (16), batting down the order, and wicketkeeper Sheik Mohammed (22).
The total of 226 seemed disappointing but it proved more than competitive. But when the burly gentleman with the Guyanese flag flying in the wind trotted across the field at the end of the game, no one, except the Leewards, was still thinking about bad endings.