Super 50, the premium domestic List-A tournament of the West Indies is getting interesting day by day. With just the last round of matches left to be played at the round-robin stage, the race for the semi-finals is getting interesting. Although Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel and Guyana Jaguars have confirmed their qualification by winning all their games in the tournament so far, the race is still on for the last two spots.
While T&T have four wins from four games and occupy the top spot, Guyana also have three wins from three games. The race for the last two places is between three teams, the Windward Islands, Barbados and surprisingly Jamaica. Although Leward Islands too has similar points as Barbados and Jamaica and has played all its games. The last match of both Barbados and Jamaica involve those two teams only, therefore, anyone among them would get to more than four points. Thus Leewards is out of the race now.
Jamaica, the newest entrant in the race have had the worst tournament until their last game where they beat Leeward Island in a thriller by six runs to earn their first points. Before this game, they had lost all their three matches very badly by margins that were not at all reflective of the talent that the team possesses.
Among the other two teams, Barbados too had a dull tournament where they lost to Leeward Island and were beaten comprehensively by Guyana and Trinidad before fighting back to register a huge 110 run win over Windward Island to gain confidence. The equation is pretty simple going ahead in the tournament. A total of three games are left to be played which could lead to three different scenarios.
If Guyana beat T&T, they would go to equal points with the Red Steel with one game in hand and have an option of topping the league. The men in Red and White however would remain at the second spot even after losing. But If the Keiron Pollard led side wins, they top the group and Guyana fight for the second spot against Windward Island.
The situation here is straightforward, the winner goes to the semifinals while the loser plays the 5th place playoff against the Leeward Islands. There is a subplot in the game in a way that if Barbados wins, chances are it can get up to the third position if Guyana beats Windward in the last game of the round-robin stage.
The men from the Amazon would fancy their chances to win this one and either remain at the top (if they beat T&T in their previous game) or at the second spot (if they lose to T&T) on the points table. On the other hand, Sunil Ambris' men would be raring to g and beat Guyana to make sure they remain in good touch before the all-important semi-final. They need this win even more as they were hammered by Jason Holder’s Barbados in their last outing and wouldn’t want to go into the semi-finals with two losses in a row.
Another subplot of the game directly involves Barbados. If the Windward Islands lose this game and Barbados win its a virtual quarter-final against Jamaica then it would get to the third spot and would face the top-ranked team in the points table. It is because the run rate of Barbados is superior to that of the Windward Islands, even if both the teams would end up with two wins and eight points in their kitty.