Jamaica’s national cricket coach, Mr Junior Bennett and the technical director, Mr James ‘Jimmy’ Adams are well known for their strong belief in meticulous planning, preparation and strategising.

So given that this is the rainy season in Jamaica, they would doubtless have taken into consideration the strong possibility of the weather intervening long before the opening regional limited overs game against the Windward Islands at the Trelawny Multi Purpose Stadium on Thursday.

As it was, rain intervened necessitating the use of the Duckworth/Lewis mathematical formula to determine a winner. The Windward Islands came out on top. Given the circumstances there were immediate questions regarding Jamaica’s tactics including – but not confined to – the decision of the hosts to bat first.

However, in the hard world of competitive sport, that is water (no pun intended) under the bridge. Today, hosts Jamaica must beat the powerful and confident champions Trinidad and Tobago at Sabina Park to give themselves a real chance of qualification for the semi-final stage.

From a purely nationalistic standpoint, this newspaper hopes that the Jamaica team – with or without their captain Mr Christopher Gayle who suffered an ankle injury on Thursday – will get the job done.

Narrow nationalism apart though, this newspaper is very aware that annual competitions such as the current West Indies Cricket Board Limited Overs President’s Cup serves for the greater good of West Indies cricket. Such competition is meant to hone and refine the skills of the region’s best players and sharpen their competitive edge, even while keeping fans and other stakeholders including potential sponsors interested.

Crucially, tournaments such as this one gives the regional selectors an opportunity to assess the quality available to them as they seek to choose the best West Indies team to take on the world.

The trouble is that the shortage of resources has forced the organisers of regional cricket, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), to structure a tournament that is much too short to properly achieve all the desired ends. It should never be that any team is in a must-win situation after just one match.

Resource constraints unfortunately is only one of several grave difficulties facing the regional game.

As the situation now stands, this limited overs tournament serves as part of the preparation for a three-Test and limited overs tour of Sri Lanka by the West Indies.

However, the build-up has been negatively affected by the decision of Mr Gayle who was the West Indies captain up to the last engagement by the West Indies team this year, as well as two others, Mr Dwayne Bravo and Mr Kieron Pollard, to refuse retainer contracts offered by the WICB.

Not surprisingly, the commitment of the three players – and more particularly that of Mr Gayle – to West Indies cricket is being seriously questioned. This newspaper believes that in the current circumstances the regional selectors and the Board will feel they have no choice but to select a new captain for the Sri Lanka tour. They may even feel they have to choose separate captains for the Test-match and limited-overs sections of the tour.

There seems to be no end to travail in West Indies cricket.