Banks' match-winner Winston Reid (left) getting a high-five from substitute fielder Rico Weekes after claiming another scalp. (Picture by Charles Pitt-Grant.)

by EZRA STUART

THE TWO-ZONE format which was followed by play-off matches worked in Banks' favour as they improved and found the right brew as the 2007 Banks-sponsored Barbados Cricket Association's Division 1 competition came to an end.

But moments after defeating Zone "A" winners, CGI Maple in the final at Kensington Oval on Sunday, Banks' captain and veteran left-arm spinner Winston Reid said he wanted the authorities to revert to the old round-robin league format.

"I am from the old school. I personally like to see all the clubs playing against each other. It gives you a chance to see all the guys and I am of the opinion that when you play those games, you can also set up your competition from the start," Reid said.

"You might not always get a good start but you can also finish strongly and I think the guys coming back from overseas contracts would lend a helping hand coming on to the end of the season. I personally love the longer format," Reid added

The 45-year-old Reid bowed out of Division 1 cricket in grand style with a 12-wicket match haul, which pushed his tally to a season-high 81 and a record 1 540 in a highly successful career at this level for 27 years.

Reid said he was motivated to continue playing this year after former Guardian General Barbados Youth team players Jonathan Carter, Carlos Brathwaite, Kofie Hurdle and wicketkeeper Renaldo Holder, joined Banks.

"When those guys came into the team and along with Anderson Sealy, they said, 'Reidie, you got to give us another year.' We didn't start out as strongly as we could but they kept on and from the time we won our first game, they said 'skip, we got one, we should try to get many more' and so they did," Reid noted.

Reid, who played for the YMPC club for almost two decades before joining Banks in 1998, conceded the standard of Division 1 cricket is not as high as in previous years.

"To be honest, with the absence of our overseas players in the domestic competition, the standard has dropped a bit," Reid admitted.

"But I am of the opinion that we can harness these youngsters in the right way and keep them playing competitive cricket. Not just put them in one team but put them against each other so that they can hone their skills and not to be afraid of competition and they will get better," he said.

Leading wicket-taker

Apart from having Reid as the season's leading wicket-taker, Banks also had the batsman with the highest aggregate as young left-hander Jonathan Carter amassed 643 runs while his cousin, Carlos Brathwaite scored 550 runs.

Reid, who also tasted Division 1 glory in the late 1980s with YMPC, said it is tough to say which title meant more to him.

"It is difficult. I suppose the first cup for YMPC back in 1988 would've been one to really think about and then in 2000, the first Cup for Banks. Those are the ones that really stood out but there are probably some other ones," Reid noted.

Maple's manager Barrington Yearwood put down his team's defeat to bad batting on the final day when they folded for a meagre 106 after being set a modest 158 runs for victory.

"We are very disappointed. We batted badly today [Sunday] in the second innings. We didn't play to the game plan and we lost. I must say congratulations to Banks. I thought we outplayed them for the first two days of cricket, but today they played well and defeated us," Yearwood said.

Yearwood said Maple's tactics were simple and he deemed as rubbish suggestions that they were too defensive in their approach.

"I don't think they became very defensive at all. I thought our plan was simple. We believed that we had enough time to knock off the runs and that is what we had planned to do, bat normal and knock off the runs. Things just didn't get going the way we expected. . . . We just didn't do the basics right in our approach this afternoon," he said.

* ezrastuart@nationnews.com