Jamaica Coach Cleon Smith held a positive view despite his team finishing second to winners Barbados in the Cricket West Indies Super50 championship.

Hosts Jamaica had clipped Barbados to the preceding Twenty20 (T20) competition, but the Bajans turned the tables to lift the 50-over title on Sunday.

“Coming second to Barbados is sill an achievement. Over the last three seasons Jamaica haven’t won a championship, so to come back in 2018 and challenge for two trophies that speaks to the progress we’ve made,” Smith argued.

“The girls played hard. We won the T20 [title] that we haven’t won in a long time, and Barbados came second to us. Then Barbados won the 50-over and we came second to them, so I’m pleased,” he told the Jamaica Observer after Jamaica had a two-wicket win over Leeward Islands in Sunday’s third and final round of matches in the Super50 tournament.

He noted that inconsistency, particularly in the batting department, is one area in which improvement is necessary.

“I think we’re strong all-round, but most of the time we don’t get a strong all-round performance. We struggle more in our batting, especially if we lose early wickets, but in our bowling nobody has really been able to run us over,” Smith said.

He also questioned the organisers’ decision to have only three rounds decide the Super50 champions, instead of giving all teams the chance to face each other.

He argued that one option was to compact the T20 competition over a shorter period, thereby creating room to fit in a five-round 50-over tournament.

“It’s a disappointment because I think we could have had three more days. We could have even played T20s over consecutive days in order to play five 50-over matches.

“It would be so better to play each other once in both formats of the game. I just hope that going forward we don’t have it this way anymore,” Smith.

— Sanjay Myers