Congrats to our Jamaica Tallawahs for winning both CPLT20 matches at home at Sabina Park last Tuesday and Wednesday. They beat the St. Lucia Stars and Chris Gayle’s St. Kitts and Nevis Patriots. Perhaps Gayle should have never left.
Best of luck to the Tallawahs for the rest of the tournament! It continues in Florida and other islands.
Check out the CPLT20 Schedule here!
The weekend kicks off with the St. Lucia Stars vs. the Barbados Tridents tonight in St. Lucia at 9pm!
***Tonight’s matches and matches in the schedule below can be watched on Sportsmax***
Current Standings:
Source: www.espncricinfo.com
Enjoy!
By: Gabrielle Burgess
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Sloane Stephens won her 1st Grand Slam Title on Saturday! She beat Madison Keys 6-3, 6-0.
Stephens was fully zoned in throughout the entire match, making very few unforced errors. While the favourite to win, Madison Keys probably had her worse match of the tournament. Her serve that is usually powerful was only on point for the first game of the match and deteriorated quickly afterwards. Her usual accurate forehand created many errors, often overhitting the ball. A lot of pressure was on her to win this title as the better player and I think it got to her mentally and then physically. Her game was completely off and just did not come together.
Thankfully the two finalists are friends and embraced each other strongly at the end of the match.
For Stephens, after being out for so long with an injury, this must be one of the greatest comebacks ever in tennis history. Congratulations to Sloane Stephens and we hope to see more of you!
CPL T20 Final
The CPL T20 Final was also last Saturday night between the St. Kitts & Nevis Patriots and the Trinbago Knight Riders. Chris Gayle was only able to score 1 run for the Patriots who batted first, so you know what that means! The Trinbago Knight Riders are the CPL T20 2017 Champions! They finished at 136/7 (19.0). Congrats to them.
US OPEN Men’s Final
Yesterday, World no. 1, Rafael Nadal won his 3rd US Open Title vs. Kevin Anderson 6-3, 6-3, 6-4! This was Rafa’s 16th Major Title. Nadal played for his Sweet 16 with spectacular groundstrokes, net game and quickness that was just too much for Anderson to handle. Congrats Rafa!
By: Gabrielle Burgess
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The West Indies men had a superb start to their innings with a wicket before England made any runs. Badree was on fire with both bowling and fielding and seemed to aggravate a shoulder injury towards the end of the innings after he made a lovely catch. Thankfully he had done all the work he needed to do already. England ended their innings on 155/9.
The pressure was then put on England. Even though their wickets fell quickly, pressure was still on the West Indies as well because the score of 155 was the second highest number of runs made in World T20 final history.
England responded well to the pressure and fought hard. They got 2 crucial early wickets, with Charles (1) and Gayle who just scored one boundary. Gayle has an issue timing the ball and needs to address it by being receptive to proper coaching for his shortfall.
Simmons went for a duck but Samuels was still there taking it easy with runs. There was a scare when he was called out for being caught by the wicket keeper but got called back as ‘not out’ when the umpires reviewed England’s wicket keeper scooping the ball off of the field into his glove claiming he caught it. Aussie tactics maybe? Thankfully justice was in our favour and Samuels had another chance to repeat or improve a possible game-winning performance as he did in 2012 when the Windies won their first T20 title.
England also dropped a crucial catch and missed running out Samuels as well, which definitely hurt them in the end.
Bravo stuck with Samuels for a little while and then he went. When Russell was caught for 1 and Captain Sammy came and went for 2, we knew this would end up being another nail biter for the West Indies and their fans. All of India who hosted the tournament were behind them as well, even though we booted them out in the semis.
Then we had the pair of Samuels and Brathwaite. It all came down to get 19 runs off of 6 balls!
What happened?! Strength, no weakness!
Watch “ICC T20 World Cup 2016 Final – Carlos Brathwaite Hit 4 Winning Sixes in Last Over” on YouTube here:
The West Indies won with the highest score in T20 history of 161/6.
Marlon Samuels was named Player of the Match with scoring 85* and was awarded with a Hublot watch. India’s Virat Kohli was named Player of the Tournament.
However, it was Samuels’s speech after he received his Player of the Match Award that was negative yet quite hilarious. At the end of answering his questions he made it a point to call out or send a message rather, to Australian Bowler, Shane Warne that he answers with his bat and not the mic.
On a more positive note, the West Indies now hold 3 titles this year with the Under 19 squad as World Cup Champions and the senior Men and Women teams as World T20 Champions.
With the Windies’ CPL T20 experience, their performance wasn’t perfect but they delivered.
Rally round the West Indies!
By: Gabrielle Williams (Daughter of Basil ‘Shotgun’ Williams)
Last Friday night, the West Indies allowed New Zealand to make a whopping 393 runs.
Martin Guptill surpassed our very own, Chris Gayle’s record of 215 made earlier in the tournament, to hit the highest world cup score, a smashing 237 runs not out. Credit must be given to Guptill’s magnificent performance, hitting all of 137 runs off of his last 52 balls, whether balls were bowled short or long, but our bowling and fielding was poor. Guptill got time to settle into long partnerships and Marlon Samuels dropped a crucial catch to get rid of him. Those catches you do not miss. They stood up and watched many balls roll to the boundary. We often fail to get dirty and dive to stop balls like other teams, harming us in the long run. The result for New Zealand was 393/6 (50 overs).
West Indies ended their innings at 250 all out in just 30.3 overs. Gayle made an exciting but short-lived 61 runs, then wickets crumbled even faster. New Zealand won by 143 runs. On top of that, Jamaica is not the only one with a ‘Bolt’. New Zealand’s fast bowler, Trent Boult is at his peak, as he took 4 early wickets. Sadly, Gayle and to a small extent Jonathan Carter, were the only threats New Zealand faced and they knew it. So, what was our strategy? Clearly the wrong one. Great effort was shown by the West Indies where batting was concerned because the result could have been much worse or embarrassing, as we have witnessed before in those situations. However, I believe they were incorrectly guided.
With a massive target of 393 runs, the strategy should not be to go out there and instantly make as much 6s and 4s as possible. After all it is not 20/20 cricket. They should have attempted to bat out the entire innings, peaking at the right intervals, not wildly going after 99% of the balls bowled exposing the wickets or blocking them when it was too late resulting in LBWs.
Overall, the current West Indies team is not good. Well clearly we haven’t had a good one in a while. The sport has evolved and we cannot rely on raw talent anymore. Teams West Indies used to destroy in the past have moved way beyond us. Teams we used to rival in the past such as Australia and New Zealand, totally demolish us now at practically every meeting if not all. What are they doing differently? When Australia wanted to pull themselves away to make themselves better than us in our hay day, they started looking back at the tapes, at every angle. They took it to a technical level. It’s like what is happening now with the death of Brazilian or South American football compared to European football. Times are changing and so are techniques, styles and tactics. Therefore the way West Indies are currently and have been training need to change. In a situation with a an unfit Gayle who barely got cleared to play New Zealand, all should not rest on his shoulders.
As shocking as it may seem, some of us still rally around the West Indies and do not refer to them as the ‘Worst Indies’. There were a lot of men named, ‘Hopeton’ in the bar on Friday night. I am appealing for us to rebuild. At the end of the day, the players get blamed but from management right down is responsible.
