Tony Becca

The first renewal of the Stanford 20/20 cricket tournament is over, and to Trinidad and Tobago - the winners, the new champions - congratulations on walking away with the winners' rings and the first prize of US$1 million.

There is no question about it, Trinidad and Tobago played well throughout the tournament. They looked like a team, they appeared focused and after a narrow escape against Barbados in the semi-finals on Saturday night, they returned on Sunday and thrashed Jamaica to take the honours and the jackpot.

Trinidad and Tobago were good, particularly so in the field with Dwayne Bravo, without Mervyn Dillon and under the leadership of Daren Ganga; they were simply magnificent.

And as brilliant as left-arm wrist spinner Dave Mohammed was with the ball, as much as it was probably a case that Jamaica were not so bad, as much as it was that Trinidad and Tobago were so good, in the final analysis Jamaica were terrible and even now must be and should be disappointed by their performance.

It was a performance best forgotten.

No excuse

Was it the pitch? No, that cannot be an excuse.

Although the pitch was not the best throughout the tournament and even though pitches do change during a match (a longer one, especially), the pitch could not have changed so much that inside 90 minutes Jamaica, the entire Jamaica team, were destroyed for 91 in 16.4 overs and a few minutes after that Trinidad and Tobago, led by an undefeated 50 off 33 deliveries by Williams Perkins, were racing to victory while scoring 94 for one off a mere 9.2 overs.

In other words, in a 20 overs per side contest, Jamaica, with a batting line-up of Shaun Findlay, Xavier Marshall, Marlon Samuels, Danza Hyatt, Christopher Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Carlton Baugh Jr and David Bernard Jr, and after reaching 42 for one in the eighth over, were blown away with 3.2 overs to spare.

After that, against an attack that included fast bowlers Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor, medium-pacer Bernard, and three spin bowlers, or rather three slow bowlers in left-hander Nikita Miller and right-handers Samuels and Gayle, Trinidad and Tobago dashed to victory with nine wickets in hand and with 10.4 overs - more than half of the allotted 20 - to spare.

Before the night of the tournament, on Saturday after their escape by one run in the second semi-final against Guyana, captain Gayle said - it was reported - that Jamaica were ready and that they lost out in the previous tournament because they were thinking too much of the prize money.

Counting the money

The question, therefore, and especially so from those Jamaicans who believed that Jamaica were so strong that they could not lose, is this: Were the players again counting the money going into the match?

I do not believe so and I do not believe so for three simple reasons.

Apart from Trinidad and Tobago's part in the result, apart from their intelligent bowling, their brilliant fielding and their sensible and confident approach to scoring the runs required for victory, reason number one for the defeat was Gayle's decision to move from the opening spot to number five in the batting order.

Reason number two was the failure of Findlay to learn from his mistakes, and reason number three was the fact that Mohammed mesmerised Jamaica's batsmen with his wrist spin - his spin for leg to off, from off to leg - his wonderful disguise as to which way the ball was going and landing and the degree of his spin.

By moving from the opening spot, the spot in which he has batted all his life and going down to number five, and on a slow pitch at that, Gayle, the captain, the top batsman in the team, the most feared batsman in the 50-over and the 20-over versions of the game in the world, the man who looked out of sorts in his previous two innings and the man who has been described as an inspirational captain, hinted that probably all was not well with him, that probably he feared the Trinidad and Tobago opening bowlers, or that probably he feared the pitch, and that, whatever it may have been, must have planted some doubt in the rest of his batsmen and the rest of his team.

That doubt, which must have increased not only when Findlay went out and, as he did in the previous match, swung wildly at the second delivery - a wide delivery again at that - and was on his way back to the pavilion, but also, and more so, when at 48 for three in the ninth over, Gayle walked out, could not find the ball because of Mohammed's spin and guile and was back in the pavilion, bowled for six at 58 for four in the 12th over.

Fumbling Jamaicans

Probably, however, the main reason for Jamaica's pathetic performance before Lendl Simmons smashed Samuels over the long-on boundary for the winning runs was their inability to play the spin of Mohammed.

Once, as Mohammed cut down the fumbling Jamaicans one by one, Tony Cozier, the brilliant and experienced cricket commentator who has been covering the game for over 40 years, said that the batsmen of Jamaica were batting as if they had never before seen a spinning ball.

That was how bad the batsmen of Jamaica were against the spin of Mohammed.