Tony Becca

The Super Cup cricket competition comes to an end this weekend with St. Elizabeth and Melbourne the only teams in the running for the title and the $500,000 first prize.

After threatening all season, Manchester dropped out of contention on the past weekend when they lost first innings points to outgoing champions St. Catherine Cricket Club, while St. Elizabeth and Melbourne, one hanging on to win by three wickets, one recovering to win by 216 runs, maintained their positions at number one and number two and setting up what should be an interesting finale at Melbourne Oval.

With six points for victory, three points for first innings lead and one point going to the team that trail on first innings, with St. Elizabeth on 29 points and Melbourne on 26, it will be a contest in which one can win the Cup once they do not lose the match and in which one can only win the Cup by winning the match.

In other words, anything but defeat will hand St. Elizabeth the Cup. On the other hand, however, Melbourne can only win it if they win the match.

Looking on both teams and on the pitch at Melbourne Oval, while Melbourne can lead on first innings, it is hardly likely, and especially so with their average bowling, that they can dismiss St. Elizabeth twice to win the match and the Cup.

Good match

Whatever happens, however, it should be a good match, and all roads should lead to Courtney Walsh Drive on Saturday and on Sunday.

As interesting as the final battle for the Cup promises to be, however, there is a tinge of disappointment among some teams that this weekend will mark the end of the competition.

Unlike previous years, there will be no semi-finals and no final this time around. The format this year, according to the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) in a statement last week, states that the team with the most points at the end of the round-robin will be the winners and because of that,some clubs and parishes are angry.

They are angry because, according to them, they did not know that the format had changed until they read about it in the newspapers last week.

As far as they are concerned, they believed that the format was similar to previous years and that the top four teams would move into the semi-finals with the two winners contesting the final.

According to the JCA, that was not possible this year due to the lack of funding, and all the clubs were told before the start of the competition.

Business as usual

According to some teams, however, and definitely so according to Westmoreland and Kingston Cricket Club, they were not told about the change, they did not know about the change, and they believed that it was business as usual and that the top four teams would end up playing off for the Cup.

After they found themselves out of the running for the top spot, they were playing for a place in the top four in order to keep alive their hopes of winning the Cup.

What is also interesting is that the JCA's fixtures booklet states that "for the semi-finals the home ground will be treated as a neutral venue and the preparation of the pitch and outfield will be under the supervision of the JCA Grounds Committee", and that "for both the semi-finals and the final a reserve weekend will be provided in the fixtures".

On top of that, the dates of the semi-finals and the final appear in the fixtures as July 7 and 8 and July 13 to 15 with number one to play number four and number three to play number two in the semi-finals.

The media, certainly this column, armed with a copy of the JCA's fixtures, have been talking about the battle for the top four positions for weeks and the question must be asked: if it was not so, if it is was wrong, why did not someone from the JCA inform the media and make the correction?

It could be that the members of the JCA do not read about cricket, about their own competitions, and so they did not know; or it could be that they do not care about what is writtenabout the game or the image of the game.

Successful season

Whatever the reason an I have always preferred how the competition is played this year with the team winning the most points over a period being crowned the winners than when in previous years it ended up in a knock-out system where one bad match can make the difference after a successful season - where number one can lose to a distant number four, to have a competition in which the rules are not clear cannot be good for the game.

It may well be because of such things, because of a JCA which either do not see or do not care, why the JCA's top competition is without a sponsor.