Tony Becca

Jamaica finished second in the regional Under-19 three-day tournament, by defeating Guyana, the three-day champions, with eight wickets and 9.1 overs to spare in the final. They won the one-day contest easily, and hats off to the players.

With so many of the players performing creditably, the Jamaicans seemed to have played well, with the bat, with the ball and in the field, from the beginning to the end. And with a comfortable victory over Guyana in the three-day competition, they probably deserved to have finished as double champions.

Jamaica's performance, however, was overshadowed by an embarrassing situation towards the end - a situation which saw, not for the first time in regional cricket, a team in the final one moment and out the next, and a situation which, again not for the first time in regional cricket, saw a tie in a one-day tournament broken by what happened not during that one-day tournament, but by what happened during a three-day contest.

With both semi-finals of the one-day tournament, Guyana versus Barbados and Jamaica versus the Leeward Islands, ending in no-results, Barbados and Jamaica, according to Derek Nichols, the West Indies Cricket Board's (WICB) cricket operations officer, were in the final.

According to Nichols, they were in the final for the simple reason that by finishing with 10 points out of their matches in their group, by winning two and losing one in their group, Barbados and Jamaica were one and two, respectively, going into the semi-finals.

According to the same Nichols, that, however, according to the rules, was not the case.

Following the rules

A short while after making that first decision, Nichols, after reading the rules, made another decision and out went Barbados and in came Guyana.

The rules of the regional youth tournament states that in the case of a tie at the semi-final stage of the one-day tournament, the team which finished higher in the three-day tournament moves into the final. In the latest case, Guyana, in the number one position, and Jamaica in the number two spot, were ahead of the Leeward Islands who finished the earlier tournament in fifth position.

In any language, one-day cricket is different from three-day cricket and to decide a tie in a one-day tournament by what took place in a three-day contest is foolish, to say the least.

Quite unfair

It definitely cannot be fair to any team to lose a place in a one-day final because it did not do well in a three-day contest. If a team that, up to then, is the leading team, then it seems that one-day cricket is a waste of time.

The fact, however, is that nothing is strange in West Indies cricket - not in a region where the statistics of teams who play in different groups, against different teams and, therefore, against different players, are sometimes used to move teams in a competition, and certainly not in a region, where a Twenty20 team is selected without serious consideration given to performances in Twenty20 competitions.

According to Gordon Greenidge, chairman of the West Indies selection committee, the squad of players selected to prepare for the youth World Cup was, however, selected based on performances during the one-day competition, and that is wonderful to hear.

According to Greenidge, the youth World Cup will be a one-day tournament, and so the squad had to be selected based on performances in the one-day tournament and that is really good.

With the final of the one-day tournament played based on performances in the three-day tournament, the selectors could easily have ignored it and selected the squad based on performances in the three-day contest.

The way things are going in the West Indies these days, that would not be surprising. In fact, that would be par for the course.