Never mind they’ve won one, lost one and drawn two.
Barbados Pride coach Emmerson Trotman has expressed satisfaction with his team’s performance in the first phase of the Digicel Professional Cricket League 4-Day Championship.
Victory over the Windward Islands Volcanoes on Sunday at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex in St Vincent lifted Barbados Pride to third place in the standings, and the coach was upbeat over the effort of his men as the tournament takes its first break after four rounds of matches.
“I’m quite happy with the performance of the boys. We had some new players come into the side and they have adapted well. The seniors players have carried them nicely,” Trotman told NATIONSPORT yesterday.
“We had some bad weather at the beginning of the competition which was a bit of a struggle. But the boys have applied themselves nicely, are playing together and gelling as a unit. I’m very happy about that. We’re now in third position. We’d like to be at No. 1 but the weather has played a big part.”
Two of Barbados’ matches lost a significant amount of time due to the elements and their 135-run over Windwards carried them to 42.4 points, still some distance behind front-runners Guyana Jagaurs’ 64.8 points.
The two teams will meet in the fifth round at the Guyana National Stadium from November 30 and with the competition now approaching the half-way stage, Trotman believes Barbados Pride still have a chance of winning the title.
“With six matches left we can still win the tournament. We have to master Guyana. If we can beat Guyana on both occasions, we should be alright. We are going from strength to strength. It would be nice to win the tournament after coming second for the last couple of seasons,” he said.
“Our goal is to win the tournament. They have a start on us. There is nothing we could have done about that because of the weather. While they were playing, we were sitting around waiting. Hopefully we can pull this one off against Guyana and that would give us some momentum going forward.”
In the absence of several players on duties with the West Indies senior team, Barbados Pride have fielded a relatively inexperienced unit containing only two men with international experience.
Their fast bowling attack was particularly green with the trio of Justin Greaves, Shakeem Clarke and Keon Harding combining for only 11 first-class matches among them at the start of the season.
The 21-year-old Harding replaced Clarke for the match against Windwards and removed prolific regional opening batsman Devon Smith cheaply in both innings.
“The concern I had was the fast bowling department early on. We tried young Clarke, who is in the learning process and we brought in young Harding after playing one game last year. He’s shown some potential. I’m pretty confident that he will come right and will go from strength to strength,” Trotman said.
“There is no real concern at the moment. You have to give them time. They are young. You have to be patient with them and keep working hard with them.”
Barbados’ biggest disappointment this season was a two-day defeat against Leeward Islands Hurricanes at Kensington Oval in the second round.
It was a performance Trotman made no excuses for.
“It’s quite obvious that we batted poorly in both innings. The batting did not perform. You cannot make 113 in a first innings of a four-day game and expect to come back and win,” the coach said.
“It was one game in the season, the youngsters were nervous, they weren’t tough enough in the beginning but they are improving. The Leewards game was a disaster.” (HG)
