WI Domestic Season

Inspired by cricket_22001's Bangla Domestic Season thread and aydee's Franchise stats thread, and in continuation of an observation I noted in the Don't let Zimbabwe slip further thread and the Grow the Franchise thread, I've done up an analysis of the West Indian domestic season since the reintroduction of the home-and-away (or double round robin format). The last time WI domestic teams played double round robin first-class cricket was in 2009 (and then that attempt only lasted for the season as in 2008 and 2010 the format was single round robin).

As has been noted elsewhere, the pitches for first-class cricket in the Caribbean have been problematic for some time (and this is something the WICB has recently stated it wants to address) and there has tended to be some fairly low scores at times. Indeed, much like Zimbabwe's last first-class season, this West Indian first-class season has seen scores of 250 or more being racked up in only about a third of all the innings played. However, there seems to have possibly been an effect of the extended season in the penultimate round of matches in the Caribbean as in that round scores of 250 or more occured in a healthy 58% of the total innings and the final round of matches is currently underway with 4 scores currently being 250 or more already in 6 innings (3 of them unfinished still) so far.

Note I include all the innings played including successful chases (even if the targets are small) and fourth innings in drawn matches:

Round-----Total scores of 250 or more-----Total Innings-----% of 250+ scores-----Total Runs-----Runs/innings-----Highest score-----300+ scores-----400+ scores

1-----2-----10-----20%-----2072-----207.2-----360-----2-----0

2-----1-----10-----10%-----1622-----162.2-----291-----0-----0

3-----3-----12-----25%-----2246-----187.16-----334-----2-----0

4-----4-----11-----36.36%-----2706-----246-----492/8d-----2-----1

BREAK between December and February for List A tournament

5-----3-----10-----30%-----2201-----220.1-----406/6d-----1-----2

6-----4-----11-----36.36%-----2197-----199.72-----328-----1-----0

7-----3-----12-----25%-----2640-----220-----335/6-----2-----0

8-----4-----12-----33.33%-----2549-----212.41-----353-----2-----0

9-----7-----12-----58.33%-----3062-----255.16-----480-----1-----2

Final round is ongoing but here are the stats so far:

10-----4-----6-----66.67%-----1640-----273.33-----310-----1-----0

It will be interesting to see what the scores are next season if:

1. the home-and-away format is maintained

2. the WICB continues to be able to offer retainer contracts to the 90-odd domestic players in the Professional Cricket League and these players get to focus on cricket year round, meaning they can focus on training for and preparing themselves during the rest of the year for the next first-class season and beyond.

So to update the stats now that the first-class league has come to an end (with Guyana winning the title with 8 wins from 10 matches):

Once again note I include all the innings played including successful chases (even if the targets are small) and fourth innings in drawn matches:

Round-----Total scores of 250 or more-----Total Innings-----% of 250+ scores-----Total Runs-----Runs/innings-----Highest score-----300+ scores-----400+ scores

1-----2-----10-----20%-----2072-----207.2-----360-----2-----0

2-----1-----10-----10%-----1622-----162.2-----291-----0-----0

3-----3-----12-----25%-----2246-----187.16-----334-----2-----0

4-----4-----11-----36.36%-----2706-----246-----492/8d-----2-----1

BREAK between December (Round 4) and February (Round 5) for List A tournament

5-----3-----10-----30%-----2201-----220.1-----406/6d-----1-----2

6-----4-----11-----36.36%-----2197-----199.72-----328-----1-----0

7-----3-----12-----25%-----2640-----220-----335/6-----2-----0

8-----4-----12-----33.33%-----2549-----212.41-----353-----2-----0

9-----7-----12-----58.33%-----3062-----255.16-----480-----1-----2

10-----6-----10-----60%-----2724-----272.4-----427-----2-----1

So it can definitely be noticed that the final two rounds saw significant improvements in the batting performances of the teams with over 58% of the innings seeing 250 runs or more in each of the final two rounds. Had the old format been retained there would have been only 5 rounds and by way of proxy we can estimate/guess that the Rounds 1-5 that we saw in this season would be a fair approximation of what we might have seen had this season been played under the old format. In the first 5 rounds scores of 250 or more occurred in only 24.5% of the innings. In the second 5 rounds the scores of 250 or more occurred in 42.1% of the innings.

And now that the season is over, some of the top performers have been included in the twenty man training squad for the upcoming test series against England including batsmen Shai Hope (628 runs @44.85 from 15 innings (1 not out) with a top score of 211 and two centuries and three fifties) and Shane Dowrich (a wicketkeeper; 615 runs @ 51.25 from 15 innings (3 not outs) with a top score of 131* and two centuries and three fifties) and spinners Versammy Permaul (67 wickets @ 14.07) and Devendra Bishoo (61 wickets @ 17.06). Had there only been 5 rounds though the stats for these 4 players would have looked like this:

Shai Hope - 120 runs @ 20 from 6 innings with a top score of 50 and no centuries and one fifty

Shane Dowrich - 293 runs @ 58.6 from 6 innings (one not out) with a top score of 131* and one century and two fifties

Versammy Permaul - 36 wickets @ 10.61

Devendra Bishoo - 24 wickets @ 21.75

As we can see Shai Hope ended up improving vastly (and was probably the find of the tournament) scoring 508 runs in his next 9 innings at an average of 63.5 and getting a double hundred, another score of 111 not out and two fifties. Shane Dowrich's average declined somewhat but he still maintained an above 50 average scoring 322 runs from his next 9 innings at an average of 46 and scoring another century and another fifty.

Had the old format been kept there is little doubt that Shai Hope would have been nowhere near being selected even for the 20 man training squad, much less for a possible A team stint. As it is now, he is possibly on the cusp of a maiden test cap. Dowrich would have possibly gotten a look in, but with only 6 innings to assess from one couldn't be certain that would have been consistent.

Out of the 20 man training squad about 9 or 10 players can be considered as not "current" international players (either new players or players coming back after being dropped) and of these 7 come from the two teams at the top of the league this year (Guyana and Barbados). These two teams in general have provided 12 out of the 20 players in the current training squad and for the most part these are either seasoned and/or proven current international performers (Chanderpaul, Kraigg Brathwaite) or players who did really well in the just concluded first-class series (Shai Hope, Dowrich, Permaul, Bishoo).

IF the WICB can continue to provide the contracts to the 90 contracted domestic players for the year and the players really focus on cricket in a professional way as such retainers should allow them to do, then it might well be that come next season we will see 250+ scores occurring in over 50% of the innings from the beginning of the season rather than in the last two rounds and perhaps we might see a scaling up of the averages with players who now get 45-55 getting 50-60 and players now getting 35-44 getting 40-49. At that point it could be said that the format is producing results and perhaps in a few seasons we might see more consistent performances by West Indian players internationally even if WI doesn't shift a lot in the rankings.

Cool, thanks for the update:)

And so, a new season of the Professional Cricket League (PCL) has started in the West Indies.

This is now the first time the teams are going to be playing after what is supposed to have been a year as a professional outfit (with year round training etc).

Minor changes to the League this season have been a new rule by the WICB (for which the regional integration body, CARICOM, through its Cricket Review Panel of the Prime-Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket, has called for the dissolution of and its replacement by an Interim Committee until a new body can be established):

- all teams must now pick at least two players from other territories within the WICB-system as part of their draft picks for the season

This will enable players to get used to other territories and other players long before being picked for a West Indies representative team like West Indies A, the President's XI or the senior West Indies team itself. As all the territories involved (Barbados, Leeward Islands, Jamaica, Windward Islands, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago) are a part of CARICOM's Single Market and Economy or CSME (with the exception of some of the islands in the Leewards such as the US Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and Sint Maarten - but they rarely produce players that make it beyond the Leewards tournament level anyway; and conversely there are two territories that are a part of the CSME but not a part of the WICB-system: Belize and Suriname ) then this should present little difficulty anyway as the CSME allows for the free movement of "skilled labour" which in the relevant laws includes sportspersons.

The first round of matches started yesterday, November 6th and the scores at stumps were....quite interesting:

Barbados Pride 262/2 (K. Brathwaite 111*, Shamarh Brooks 49*, Shai Hope 77; John Campbell 1-36) v Jamaica Scorpions at Kensington Oval

Trinidad and Tobago Red Force 155/3 (Evin Lewis 66, Narsingh Deonarine 43*, Yannick Cariah 28*; Gavin Tonge 2-38) v Leeward Islands Hurricanes at Warner Park

Guyana Jaguars 287/4 (Rajindra Chandrika 140*, Vishaul Singh 48, Shiv Chanderpaul 34, Leon Johnson 29; Shane Shillingford 3-87) v Windward Islands Volcanoes at Providence

On resumption today Guyana are now 342/7 (Chandrika out for 146, Shillingford with 4-105), T&T are 239/5 (Deonarine out for 55, Cariah out for 50) and Barbados are now 315/5 with Brathwaite out for 119. Brathwaite's century and Shai Hope's half century in the very first innings of the PCL is interesting given how the West Indies test side struggled in Sri Lanka with these two players in the side. Perhaps they may do better in home tests over the next season or two, or perhaps they need to be picked in the West Indies A team for some more overseas experience. Another option of course is to try affording the drafting of overseas players (perhaps on a match-by-match basis) for involvement in the PCL since Brathwaite (and others like him) may be doing well against local bowling but struggling with the overseas bowling.

What is quite interesting is that these are just the first 3 out of a possible maximum of 12 innings in the first round and already we have 2 scores over 300 and another score only a few runs short of breaching the 250 mark. If there ends up being 12 innings and all the other scores are under 250, then this year's first round would resemble last year's third round (and seventh round) in terms of number of 300+ scores and percentage (and number) of innings of 250 runs or more. Which itself is an improvement on last year's first round. However, the way the teams have been scoring thus far it would not surprise me if all the teams batting first made scores of 300-350 and I would not be surprised if the Windwards and Jamaica made replies of 300+ and the Leewards might also reply with a score of 250+. I'll go out on a limb here and tentatively predict that there should be at least 4 scores of 300+ in this round and 5-6 scores of 250 or more overall. And we should get 10-12 innings, thus 40-60% of the scores should be 250 or more (and perhaps an average of 235-245 runs per innings) would be my prediction.

I may well turn out to be wrong of course, but the first day and half worth of play would seem to indicate that at the very least a good third of the scores should be 250 runs or more.

Additionally a woman, Jacqueline Williams became the first female umpire to officiate a men's first class game in the region when the round started.

A note on the names: Some of the names' origins are obvious (Hurricanes, Volcanoes, Jaguars). Some not so much. For T&T, the Red Force name is a moniker that had been used for T&T's cricket team in recent times, mainly for the limited overs cricket (and especially T20 cricket) and refers to the predominate colour on the T&T flag. For Barbados, the Pride moniker is supposed to be a reference both the national flower (the Pride of Barbados flower) and a faint allusion to a pride of lions. For Jamaica, the name is obviously a reference to scorpions but it's likely a name picked by force of circumstance and lack of imagination since Jamaica was the only outfit without a franchise team name in the first season after the franchises were allowed to pick their own names. This speaks poorly of the Jamaica Cricket Association since it should not have taken an entire year to come up with a team name and when such a name was picked it certainly should not have been a name like the Scorpions, since while Jamaica does have scorpions (like most places on the planets), Jamaica is not particularly associated with scorpions. They (the JCA) had apparently tried to get usage rights for the name "Tallawahs" (the name of the separately owned Jamaica outfit in the T20 Caribbean Premier League) but that went nowhere (Tallawah or Talawah by the way is a word used in Jamaica (and Belize) and refers to being full of fight or spirit (see: http://wiwords.com/word/talawah) with a common expression being "likkle but tal(l)awah" mean "short but strong/sturdy/feisty/full of fight"). A safe generic name like Hurricane was already taken by the Leewards, but Tallawah and Hurricane were not the only words available. They could have for instance picked something related to Jamaica's history (like the buccaneers) or its national symbols (an obvious choice being the crocodile (locally called "alligator") which is on the Jamaican coat of arms).

And a short update:

All three first innings ended with scores over 300. Guyana made 362, Barbados made 373 and T&T made 325. In reply Windwards are 127/2, Jamaica are 114/2 and Leewards are 55/4 respectively.

The going looks tough for the Leewards, but the Windwards and Jamaica both are in a good position to push on for a score of 250+.

IF either the Windwards or Jamaica make a score of 300 then this would be an improvement on the previous season in that for the entire previous season of the PCL there was never more than 3 scores of 300+ in any one round no matter how many scores of 250 or greater made. Not even in rounds 9 and 10 of last season when there 7 and 6 scores of 250+ respectively were there ever more than 3 scores of 300 or more. This naturally kept limiting the average number of runs per innings since greater scores and greater numbers of greater scores would lift the averages.

Update:

So after the creditable performance by the teams batting first to all score 300 in the first innings, the batting of the other teams (and perhaps pitch deterioration in the Guyana v Windwards game) has resulted in the usual low scores seen at the start of the recent first-class seasons:

Barbados Pride 373 and 4/0 beat Jamaica Scorpions 189 and 187 by 10 wickets at Kensington Oval

Trinidad and Tobago Red Force 325 beat Leeward Islands Hurricanes 118 and 184 by an innings and 23 runs at Warner Park

Guyana Jaguars 362 and 95 lead Windward Islands Volcanoes 228/9 and 103/7 by 126 runs at Providence

Thus far the first round is shaping to be little different (though with some small improvements in some areas) than the first round of the previous season with a low average number of runs per innings (at the moment the average is about 197 but in the unlikely event that Windwards reach their target this will go up to around 208 which would be not much different than the 207 of last season). The total runs is better now (2168 and ongoing v 2072 of last season), the total scores of 250 or more is better than last season (3 scores of 300+ vs 2 scores of 300+ last season in the first round) and the percentage of 250+ scores is also better (27.27% v 20%) and the highest score of the round is also marginally better (373 v 360).

Train Driver wrote:Do you know if Dwayne Smith is playing this season, I'm not sure if I read he was retiring from 1st class or cricket altogether, watched him a number of times when he was at Sussex, brilliant one day and then lazy and poor the next, a frustrating player

He retired from first class cricket in December 2014. So no he is not playing.

And your description is bang on target. He can be a very frustrating player - brilliant today and then the complete opposite the next day. That describes a LOT of the current senior players of the West Indies really. Gayle, Smith, Pollard, Bravo, Sarwan....all of them are or were like that. Which has been a major problem for the WI because the consistent players (Chanderpaul with the bat, sammy with the fielding) have tended to be overburdened and meanwhile new players don't get a proper extended run (like what Bangladesh did with the team they now have that is finally gelling and producing results) because the inconsistent "flash in the pan" performers do just enough brilliance that they keep getting selected on either merit or due to popular pressure to do so (from the old ramnarine led wipa or even politicians and the fan base). Personally I'm cautiously optimistic that the selectors have stuck with the same squad from Sri Lanka for Australia. Will that squad be comprehensively beaten Down Under? Absolutely. But even great teams never just magically appear at the crease and it takes investment. I do hope though that they stop trying to make Shai Hope an opener. He doesn't even open for Barbados, so they should play him lower down. Open with Ramdin if they need to find a way to fit him in. Ramdin used to open sometimes and he can't do any worse than Hope in the opener's slot and it might well give Ramdin's batting a boost.

The second round has started and all teams batting first closed the first day on scores between 218 and 247. Hopefully all teams will push on to 250 or more.

The first round ended with Windwards losing to Guyana with a sub-150 score chasing 220+.

Will give a full update in a few days.

EDIT:

All the teams crossed the 250 threshold now with two reaching 300-runs..

Barbados 300 vs T&T (Brooks 111)

Jamaica 259 vs Windwards (McCarthy 92; Sebastien 7/58)

Guyana 306/7 vs Leewards (Singh 150, J Chanderpaul 65; Joseph 4 /65)

So the Regional Super50 is concluded.

The second semi-final saw Barbados Pride beat the Leeward Islands Hurricanes by 110 runs. Shai Hope set up the win with a 125 runs. Kraigg Brathwaite (54) and Jason Holder (42) also contributed with the bat to push Barbados to 314/7 while Carlos Brathwaite (27 and 3-56) put in a very useful allround performance. The Leewards had a good opening bat in Montcin Hodge who put on 63 but nobody else supported him (except Cornwall briefly) and the Leewards were bowled out for 204.

In the final between Jamaica Scorpions and Barbados Pride, Barbados batted first and Jamaica's bowlers had them under control for a good period with Barbados on 138/5 at on point, up until around the 40th-42nd over when Shai Hope and Jason Holder put on 127 runs for the sixth wicket in 13.4 overs (in fact for a six over period they put on 94 runs). There was some odd captaincy by Nikita Miller for Barbados as he didn't bring on Rovman Powell until the 46th over despite Powell having been the key in the demolition of the Trinidad & Tobago team in the semi-final and Powell not being injured. Powell went on to prise out two inexpensive wickets including that of Holder and breaking the Holder/Hope partnership. Barbados finished on 271/9. In reply Jamaica got off to an indifferent start with only Walton making any contribution (26) by the 16th over with 3 wickets lost and then Barbados gutted the Jamaica team to leave them on 122/7 in the 31st over. Rovman Powell went on to offer the only serious resistance for Jamaica by putting on 65 from 59 balls but got insufficient support and was caught by Holder off the bowling of Carlos in the 45th over to end Jamaica's innings on 212 all out, Barbados winning by 59 runs.

As for the standout performances. For batting it was Kieran Powell, Kraigg Brathwaite, Shai Hope, Sunil Ambris (for the Windwards), Jason Mohammed, Rovman Powell and Montcin Hodge. They all scored over 350 runs for the tournament with averages between 44 and 70. Rakheem Cornwall had an average of 50 but scored 252 runs aggregate.

For bowling the most consistent bowlers were Ashley Nurse, Sulieman Benn, Jason Holder (all three figure in the top 10 for number of wickets, averages and econ rates) along with Cottrell, Rampaul and Chase (top 10 in two out of the three categories). Alzarri Joseph, Jerome Taylor and Shannon Gabriel also had very good tournaments (Taylor the most out of those 3).

And now the selection panel of the WICB (or CWI as it is now can be called) has announced a 15 man training squad and a 12 man President's XI to face England.

The selection panel seems to have decided to keep on previous players even if they didn't do so well in the recently concluded Super50. That's good in that players are being given a run to establish themselves. So we have the 15 man training squad:

Jason Holder (Captain)

Devendra Bishoo

Carlos Brathwaite

Kraigg Brathwaite

Jonathan Carter

Miguel Cummins

Shane Dowrich

Shannon Gabriel

Shai Hope

Alzarri Joseph

Evin Lewis

Jason Mohammed

Ashley Nurse

Kieran Powell

Rovman Powell

....and a 12 man President's XI which includes possible replacements for those in the squad who ultimately don't step up. Persons like Sunil Ambris, Rakheem Cornwall, Montcin Hodge, etc have been rewarded for a good season with a pick for the President's XI:

Jahmar Hamilton (Captain)

Sunil Ambris

Ronsford Beaton

Rahkeem Cornwall

Montcin Hodge

Kyle Hope

Damion Jacobs

Reynard Leveridge

Kyle Mayers

Andre McCarthy

Raymon Reifer

Kemar Roach

For the ODIs against England, I suppose my 12-man pick from the training squad might be:

Kraigg Brathwaite

Kieran Powell

Shai Hope

Jason Mohammed

Shane Dowrich +

Rovman Powell

Jason Holder *

Carlos Brathwaite

Devendra Bishoo

Shannon Gabriel

Ashley Nurse

Alzarri Joseph (12th man)

Reserves:

Jonathan Carter

Miguel Cummins

Evin Lewis

So the squad for the 1st ODI was:

Jason Holder (c)

Devendra Bishoo

Carlos Brathwaite

Kraigg Brathwaite

Jonathan Carter

Shannon Gabriel

Shai Hope (wk)

Alzarri Joseph

Evin Lewis

Jason Mohammed

Ashley Nurse

Kieran Powell

Rovman Powell

Which was similar to what my pick would have been except Dowrich wasn't included and Jonathan Carter and Evin Lewis were.

Carter proved himself to be have been rightly picked in the final XI with a quick 52 off 47 balls (and that from being on 5 runs off 19 balls at one point).

The final XI (K. Brathwaite, E. Lewis, K. Powell, S. Hope +, J. Mohammed, J. Carter, J. Holder *, C. Brathwaite, A. Nurse, D. Bishoo and S. Gabriel) did not win as England scored 296/6 and WI scored 251 in 47.2 overs.

Encouragingly this XI made a competitive score and was in the chase right up until around the 41st to 46th over. And it didn't include the likes of Gayle, the Bravos, Pollard, Ramdin, etc.

Jimmy Adams as the new director of cricket and the new CEO (Johnny Grave) both seem to want a rethink on the selection policy and a better relationship with the players. I would be cautious about any rethink of selection policy that basically allowed players to get selected for ODIs without playing any List A games, but both of them encouragingly referred to the need for compromise by both sides (board and players). For players who didn't make themselves available for ANY List A games I would not want to see them selected for the ODI squad. Period. It's ridiculous that some players feels so entitled to ODI (and a lesser extent to Test) selection that they think it's a sustainable policy for the WI selectors to pick guys who only play in T20 leagues across the globe. On the flip side, the current policy is too harsh on a player like Marlon Samuels who did play in the Super50 for a couple games if I remember rightly but then went to England (on the WICB's bill and initiative) to have his bowling worked on and then went to the UAE to play in the PSL. I would suggest that the policy allow a player who played in (or at least was available for and was in the territorial squad even if not in the playing XI) for at least 2 or 3 List A games to be eligible for selection to the ODI squad. Thereafter selection would be based on potential or known form (if for instance Player X was in the Leewards squad but not in the final XI due to an niggle at the time or because for whatever reason he wasn't being played in the final XI (like Brandon King for a bit)) and performance in the tournament.

So if say...Dwayne Bravo and Chris Gayle made themselves available for 3 games and played in 2 each but both of them underwhelmed (say no score over 25 in any innings by either) and then went off to one of their overseas leagues, then they would be eligible for selection, but to be fair, those who had performed consistently in 6 or more games (like Jason Mohammed) would have a greater chance of being actually selected.

Had Dwayne Bravo, Gayle and Pollard gotten their way we likely would not have seen Jason Mohammed playing in this ODI and he was the standout batsman apart from Jonathan Carter. Mohammed made 72 off 91 balls. And to top it off based on past experience, I have little doubt that a team composed of say Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Darren Bravo, Kieron Pollard, Darren Sammy, Marlon Samuels, Lendl Simmons, Sunil Narine (who reportedly doesn't want to play for Trinidad after a leaked TTCB email in which an official accused him of pelting in early 2016 around the time his action was deemed illegal) and Andre Russell would have done much better. Scoring 297 would have been West Indies second highest successful run chase after 300/3 at Centurion against South Africa in 2004 and would have been the highest run chase at home surpassing the 292/6 Arnos Vale against New Zealand in 2002 (both games were during the time of Lara and Chanderpaul). The closest WI has come to a score like that in the post-Lara/post-Chanderpaul era was in 2013 when they scored 289/8 chasing 288 against India at Visakhapatnam. The team then included Johnson Charles, an in-form Kieran Powell, Marlon Samuels, an in-form Darren Bravo, Lendl Simmons, Dwayne Bravo (who didn't contribute much as captain then with 18 off 26 balls and 0-54 off 8 overs), an in-form Darren Sammy, Jason Holder, Sunil Narine, Versammy Permaul and Ravi Rampaul. The team succeeded then because a number of those players were in-form and had been playing domestic List A cricket as well. If the same team were to play again I would have serious doubts at to whether Sammy would have been able to pull off 63 off 45 balls again and Kieran Powell did not make a 59 off 70 balls this time (he only made 1). Instead they might well have folded for 180-220 as happened in the first match of that series against India. Or they might have made 278 as in this match from 2014 (coincidentally also against England and Kieran Powell also made 1 in that match): http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/636535.html

For the next match my XI would be:

Kraigg Brathwaite

Kieran Powell

Shai Hope +

Jason Mohammed

Jonathan Carter

Rovman Powell

Jason Holder *

Carlos Brathwaite

Ashley Nurse

Devendra Bishoo

Shannon Gabriel

Okay, so time for a lot of updates. It's been an extremely busy period for me so haven't been able to update as frequently as I would like.

So here's how things went.

In international cricket the rest of the ODI series with England really only saw Mohammed, Nurse, Carter, Holder and Joseph put in performances. Overall though from the decent showing in the first ODI the team regressed by the end of the series. Following that series there was a T20 series with Pakistan. Originally it was to be 2 matches but then it was stretched to four matches. The first match was won with ease by Pakistan with Carlos Brathwaite being the real stand out performer for WI from that match with both bat and ball. The second match was narrowly lost by WI with a decent bowling performance being let down by the batting in the chase which saw Marlon Samuels stand firm while most of the others fell around him until a late charge by Jason Holder almost helped WI over the line. The third T20, WI won on a canter as a decent bowling performance was this time rewarded with some very good batting by Evin Lewis (scored 91). The fourth T20 was lost by WI after a middling score (helped largely by Chadwick Walton and Carlos Brathwaite) was not adequately defended by the bowling. Following the T20 series there was an ODI series with Pakistan. History was made as in the first ODI, WI made their highest successful run chase at home in ODIs by scoring 309/6 with an over to spare. This was due to the batting clicking in many ways. Lewis made 47 and Kieran Powell made 61. Jason Mohammed made 91 not out off 58 and really took WI home (with Nurse who made 34 not out) when it looked like Pakistan were in control and along the way was cementing his name and place in the squad. As with the ODI series against England though, after the first match the team regressed. Pakistan won the second match handsomely (by 70+ runs), though the margin of defeat could have been much worse as WI were 75/6 at one point chasing 283. The third ODI was in the end lost easily but picking up where they left off when batting and making 208 all out from being 75/6, the WI ground out a score of 233/9 and then had a good shout at controlling the match when they had Pakistan at 36/3. Pakistan regained full control of the match after that and never let go and won by 6 wickets with more than 6 overs to spare.

So overall there is some promise with the ODI squad; they seem to do well in the first match but lose their way from there. However they do seem to have potential.

Next update - the domestic matches.

Crap.

I had a detailed post about Rounds 6 through 9. And then it got lost as I was posting it. Sorry fellas.