BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Captain Kavem Hodge believes Windward Islands Volcanoes’ lack of consistency cost them dearly during the just-concluded domestic first class championship.
Volcanoes finished a disappointing fifth in the six-team table with 78 wins after winning just twice in the campaign, eventually aborted after eight rounds of the 10 planned rounds due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the region.
[We should have done better] especially with the start we had. I’d always said … that consistency would be the biggest challenge for us and that would have determined how far and how high we ended in the table and that proved to be right,” Hodge said.
“We started off pretty well but unfortunately we were not consistent enough, especially in the bowling department so I think it is something we have to learn from and learn quickly.
“[We] just have to take a page from the Pride’s book. Even though they lost the first game, they were consistent in whatever they did and they were winning games outright so kudos to them but is something that we have to learn from.”
Barbados Pride, declared winners with 134.8 points, lost their opener to Volcanoes in Arnos Vale in a shock result but then went on a superb five-game winning streak to storm to the top of the table.
In contrast, Volcanoes won just once in their next seven games – a seventh round victory over Jamaica Scorpions in Grenada – to slip into the bottom half of the standings.
The 27-year-old Hodge, who was leading Volcanoes this year for the first time in the first class championship, said the experience had been a great learning curve.
“It was a really good experience. Obviously I’d been given the chance up front – being told that Sunil [Ambris] would have been away – so it was a good opportunity,” he explained.
“Learning on the job is always a challenge … but having guys like Devon Smith and Shane Shillingford in the squad made things a bit easier, learning from them and getting ideas. They were always sharing the wealth of knowledge that they have.
For his part, the right-handed Hodge finished as the second highest run-getter for Volcanoes with 454 runs at an average of nearly 38, with a single hundred.
Smith once again topped his side’s batting with 649 runs at an average of 46.
