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By Neto Baptiste
Batsman and captain of the Anguilla cricket team, Jahmar Hamilton, said they came into the Leeward Islands T20 tournament with the mindset of take it ‘one game at a time,’ knowing that their biggest rival would have been the home team, the Antigua and Barbuda Master Blasters.
Anguilla finished the inaugural tournament unbeaten to claim the top prize on Sunday, beating Antigua and Barbuda by 21 runs at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.
“Our mindset was just to come and to just take one game at a time and play positive cricket and believe in ourselves. The team that was most threatening to us was basically Antigua so it was just for us to take it one game at a time and on that day, see if we come out victorious. It’s all about the team sticking together and believing in each other and yes, we knew we might not have gotten the preparation we wanted but the most important thing was that we believe in each other and believe in our skills,” he said.
The Leeward Islands player who was named MVP of the tournament, commended his players for the way they performed throughout the tournament, especially in Sunday’s final where he said they capitalized on every opportunity to score.
“Chesney got off to a flier so I didn’t need to go too hard. He got to 59 or 60 in about six or seven overs so my mindset was just to try and bat as deep as possible because I know that once I bat deep that I can take the away on the back end and we could capitalize, even though we were scoring at around nine per over for majority of the game so as long as I batted deep I know runs would have come. It would also put pressure on the batsmen and force their main bowlers to bowl earlier up whereas you leave a little gap in the back end for us to squeeze some runs,” he said.
Hamilton gave the tournament favourable reviews, highlighting the competition it provides for players as key to fostering wholesome rivalry between the territories.
“Some people would say shocked but I feel Antigua knew we were the team that would give them trouble so they were looking at us closely and we were looking at them also. It was a good game of cricket; a good tournament and it was just great, especially the rivalry that Antigua and Anguilla has over the past few years I’ve been playing. We play competitive cricket and we play hard cricket also,” he said.
Hamilton finished as the tournament’s leading scorer with 313 runs from six innings, scoring at an average of 52.17 while Ross Powell of Nevis and Kofi James of Antigua were second and third respectively. Powell amassed a total of 299 runs while James compiled 244 runs. Dimitri Adams (Anguilla) with 234 runs and Jamie Cornelius (Nevis) with 173 runs, round off the top five.
Andros Bowens of Anguilla was the number one bowler with 13 wickets while Kian Pemberton of Nevis (13), Rahkeem Cornwall of Antigua (12), Jaidel Richardson of Anguilla (12) and Colin Archibald of Nevis (11) occupies positions two through five.
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