JAMAICA’S national senior cricket coach Junior Bennett believes further improvement is necessary if the team is to remain atop the West Indies Cricket Board’s regional four-day competition.

Bennett was speaking at Sabina Park moments after the team arrived from the Eastern Caribbean where they defeated the Leeward Islands by seven wickets in St Kitts between January 15-18, and then mauled the Guyanese by an innings and 27 runs in Barbados from January 22-25.

“I think we have had a positive start to the tournament. We have played some good cricket though there are certain aspects of our cricket that I’m not particularly pleased with.

“Our ground fielding has been good, but we dropped one or two catches in the matches and that’s something we have to pay attention to,” Bennett said.

The defending champions, who also beat the Windward Islands on home soil at Chedwin Park in early January, are seeking their third title in as many years and are already in pole position after pulling off outright victories in their first three matches to date.

The coaching staff, however, will be looking to fill the void left by middle-order batsman Brendan Nash and orthodox left-arm spinner Nikita Miller, who have both been called up for the limited-overs series versus Australia Down Under.

Nash has already saved the team several times with useful knocks in game-changing partnerships, and Miller is easily Jamaica’s leading wicket-taker with 22 wickets so far this season.

Interestingly, Jamaica’s next game on February 12 is against the Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) in Guyana under lights using the newly-introduced pink balls.

Bennett revealed that training will resume tomorrow using the pink balls, but his team will not be able to practice under lights since Jamaica does not currently have the facilities to do so.

“We have two (pink balls) to use at practice and we heard they stood up during the Trinidad and Guyana game (in the previous round).

“We have no lights in Jamaica, but we’ll train in Guyana the Wednesday and Thursday (before the game against the CCC). I don’t know if we’ll get a strip to bat on, so more than likely it will be just fielding under lights,” he said, while adding, “some of these guys have played under lights before, so hopefully, they can go out and give a good account of themselves.”

Meanwhile, captain Tamar Lambert said he is satisfied with the collective effort of the team over the two rounds in the Eastern Caribbean, but concedes the top-order batsmen need to emulate the batting of Wavell Hinds and Carlton Baugh, who both struck centuries in a 200-run partnership against Guyana.

“I think we performed well over the two weeks. It was nice to see Wavell and Carlton put on a big partnership. We’re improving every game that we play and we still have three games to go and we don’t want to get complacent because we still have a lot of work to do,” Lambert said.

Jamaica are yet to get a 50 partnership from their openers since the start of this season’s tournament, despite Xavier Marshall, Shawn Findlay, Brenton Parchment and Danza Hyatt being given opportunities by the coaching staff.

Said Lambert: “(The openers)… was a concern and still is a concern. We brought in Danza and I think he did fairly well, along with Brenton, and they batted over an hour against Guyana. We haven’t been getting that before, so it was nice to see that.”

Of his own performance with the bat, the captain conceded that he has had a disappointing run but is confident of making use of any starts that he gets for the rest of the tournament.

“I’m disappointed because I got a start against the Leewards in the first innings and I thought I should have carried on. In cricket it’s not every innings you will get a start, so once you get a start you should be able to carry on, and that’s a big challenge for me in my cricketing career so far, but I’ve answered that a lot of times, so I just need to get starts and carry on,” he emphasised.