In favor of bonus points system introduced

On Tuesday evening, Guyana beat the Windward Islands in their opening game of the CG Regional Super50 by 10 runs in Trinidad after making 229-9 in 50 overs before dismissing the Windwards for 219 in 46 overs to take an early lead in the tournament.
Despite their win, experienced former International Cricket Commentor, Guyanese Reds Perreira, speaking on the ‘Sports Watch with Sean Devers’ Radio programme, described Guyana’s batting as ‘very disappointing.

The 84-year-old Reds, speaking from St Lucia, lamented that the batting was very negative and the number of soft dismissals by the Guyanese were a cause for concern.
Guyana has not won a Regional 50 title since they beat Barbados at Bourda in 2005.
“Not rotating the strike, running without any urgency and turning ones into twos to put pressure on the fieldsmen. That was some of my early thoughts,” he said.
“And the bowling was ragged…[Nial] Smith give [Alick] Athanaze every opportunity to play as many shots as possible. Athaneze didn’t have to look for ways of scoring, he just gave away runs galore at the top,” said Reds who commentated on 152 Tests.

With 16 to win with three wickets in Smith returned to take two wickets in an over to swing the pendulum in Guyana’s favour.
After Chanderpaul Hemraj (1) was out lbw to a verdict that could have gone anyway, Imlach was timing the ball nicely before he got himself out.
Tagenarine Chanderpaul took 60 balls to make 29 while Imlach faced 73 balls in his 41 as Guyana reached 36-1 after 10 overs of power-play and soaked up over 100 dots balls in 50 overs.
“He (Tevin Imlach) looked to run a ball inches away from his off-stump to third man. He has played a number of First-Class matches to know that he can’t play that shot.
The number of times that Imlach has played off the backfoot to short deliveries and hit the ball straight to backward point,” noted Reds.
Reds said the top order, which included Chanderpaul, who struggled to get the ball away before playing an out of character hook to be caught at long-leg, never attacked the Windwards bowling.
“The Windwards bowling was very disciplined but (Ryan) John’s figures were very flattering, I think Lewis bowled much better than John was but was not as successful. Let’s look at the other dismissals, soft dismissal for Imlach, Soft dismissal for (Shimron) Hetmyer. Hetmyer has played enough cricket to have bossed the Windwards bowling. He threw his hand away unnecessarily… there was no pressure, he had started to build momentum with a partnership with (Sherfane) Rutherford who was also out to a soft dismissal when he hung his bat out with no movement of his feet and was caught behind,” He added.

“The batting overall was very, very ordinary. The running between the wickets very ordinary and we didn’t look to put pressure on the fielders. And when we came to the bowling Smith does not cut it. Looking at the overall performance, the batting was below par, we fell below the run rate and the bonus points system did not operate in our favour. While we won the Windwards bowling was a lot more disciplined than the Guyana bowling,” continued Reds, who is scheduled to hold a commentors workshop at GCC next month.
Reds is also in favour of the bonus points system introduced for the first time in this tournament to help change the approach of West Indies cricket as it competes with the ‘big’ teams in international cricket at the beckoning of white ball Coach Darren Sammy.

Teams can earn points for achieving various performance targets at stages during the match.
These include runs during the power-play overs, wickets during power-play, decrease in dot ball percentage, batters scoring centuries and bowlers taking 5-wicket hauls.
“Well, this suggests that the CWI’s cricket committee is functioning since, for a long time, that Committee never really functioned.
They have come up with these new innovations …but if they will improve our performance is too early to say.
But a game can be won or lost but these points, so it’s important that the players understand what they need to do to get the bonus points,” said Reds, who, along with his wife, were invited as guests of President Dr Irfaan Ali for the CPL play-offs.