CricInfo Home
News Home

NEWS FOCUS
Rsa in Pak
NZ in India
Zim in Aus

Domestic
Other Series

The expansion of the Red Stripe Bowl to include a few undistinguished teams has attracted criticism in certain quarters, but Barbados captain Courtney Browne and coach Hendy Springer are willing to give the move a chance to develop.

Their concerns, however, stem from the way the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has gone about the expansion and the approach of regional associations in the build-up to the Caribbean's premier limited-overs competition.

"It will be a good idea when every single regional board gets it act together as far as serious preparation is concerned," Springer said.

"A lot of these teams started preparation pretty late, hence the quality of the competition."

Since the start of the 2002 tournament a week ago, none of the fledgling teams – Antigua and Barbuda, Leewards XI, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Windwards XI, University of the West Indies and Canada – has defeated any of the four major teams – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

In some cases, matches have been terriblyone-sided.

It therefore gives the impression to several observers that the tournament has been watered down.

"Obviously, you can see that it is a problem. Hopefully the WICB will look at it again and review it and see what they can do to improve our standard of cricket," Browne said. "I don't have a problem with weaker teams – as long as they are not the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands being separated. We need to keep our six main teams together."

His suggestion was to bring in other teams outside of the Caribbean to help boost the quality of the game.

The Leewards XI, in particular, have been the major let-downs in the past few days.

In their opening match against Jamaica they crashed for 125 and lost by nine wickets about 3 p.m. and when they met Barbados at the Melbourne club ground on Sunday, they lost by the humiliating margin of 193 runs after conceding 323 for five and responding with 130.

Springer, however, was not in total opposition to having the teams that are currently on show.

"It is looking at it from a development level and exposure level," the Barbados coach said. "If exposing all these young guys, young teams and individuals benefits West Indies cricket, it will be doing a good job, but that is to be seen in the future."

Barbados beat UWI by 102 runs in their opening match and are yet to be tested. It translates into not being adequately assess their performance, but in light of hardly inadequate preparations, these early matches are giving them a boost before meeting a much more formidable challenge.

"You always like to measure your performance against the stronger teams," Browne said. "In our zone, we are playing the inexperienced teams early. That's a good thing, so we can build up for when the meet the Jamaicans and the others."

Springer described their first two matches as a"re-familiarising" exercise ahead of their remaining back-to-back preliminary matches against St Vincent and the Grenadies on Friday and against hosts Jamaica the following day.

"We still need to maintain the level of cricket we are playing," he said. "We know that we've got batsmen in our side who are better than the bowling attacks in the opposition teams so far. We've been justifying it by getting a couple of runs."

© Barbados Nation