We played brainless cricket

Dear Editor,

Kindly allow me some space in your newspaper for this letter.

Like thousands of Guyanese I was devastated by the loss of the Guyana Amazon Warriors to the Barbados Tridents in the Limacol CPL final on Saturday in St. Kitts. In my opinion we lost due to poor leadership and questionable decision making.

In other words, we played brainless cricket and I will tell you why.

When we had the Tridents down and out up until the fifteenth over, captain Denesh Ramdin’s use of his bowlers in the next five overs was questionable. Why bowl Ronsford Beaton in the last over when the young man’s confidence was down and he had already gone for 17 runs in his only over? Also, except for one game, he had leaked too many runs in the last over that he had bowl, so why bowl him the last over again in a final. Sunil Narine and Krishmar Santokie should have bowled the last two overs.

Now when we batted everyone knew that rain had already stopped play two times and more rain was expected during the night. Why on earth were our batsmen not given the Duckworth/Lewis paper in their pocket so that they could keep abreast with the required run rate every over? That was criminal on the part of the management team. Also, it was rather strange that Lendl Simmons whose strike rate was over 150 in the entire tournament was striking at 76 when he was out. As for Mohammad Hafeez and Jimmy Neesham their overall strike rate in the entire tournament was very poor and continued in the final.

We cannot continue like this losing in the final of the CPL, so I would like to make a personal appeal to Mr. Bobby Ramroop to fire Hafeez, Neesham and Navin Stewart and bring in more explosive batsmen and two more quality bowlers. And finally, whatever happened to Robin Bacchus? Is he in the team? I do not think so.

Yours faithfully,
Imtiaz Baccus