Jamaica vs Leewards - PCL

Kingston, Jamaica - The Jamaica Franchise will be looking to record back-to-back victories in the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) Professional Cricket League (PCL) Four-Day Tournament when they square off against the Leeward Islands.

The game is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am.

The Jamaicans are currently in second place on 34 points, five behind leaders Guyana Jaguars, while the Leeward Islands Hurricanes are at the bottom of the standings on seven points. Both teams have made changes to their previous 13-man squads going into the encounter.

Jamaica will see the return of left-handed opening batsman John Campbell, along with batsman Horace Miller and left-arm pacer Gavan Brown. Brown will be replacing fellow left-armer Sheldon Cotterell, who is to join the West Indies team on the tour of South Africa.

Captain Tamar Lambert remains hopeful that the batting will come to the fore as they seek maximum points. "This game is a very crucial one for us; this is the last game before we go into the Christmas break and prepare for the One Day, so we are looking forward to it," he told reporters yesterday. "Obviously we haven't been getting any starts, so you know we look to make some changes at the top and hopefully if those players make the final 11 tomorrow (today), they will come in and make a difference at the top.

"We will try to take it one day at a time. We haven't been putting up good first innings total or batting well in both innings, so it's another opportunity for us as batters to go out there and put some good scores on the board. That is always our challenge... to get a good score on the board, so once we do that we always have the bowling to get 20 wickets," he added.


Lambert also hailed Brown, who will be joining Jamaica's 13-man squad for the first time. "He (Brown) has been bowling very well throughout the trials and he got his opportunity to come into a Jamaica 13-man squad, so well done to him. Hopefully if given the opportunity to play, he will go out there and make the best use of it," he noted.

Meanwhile, the Leeward Islands Hurricanes have brought in leg-spinner Colin Hamer along with all-rounder Rakheem Cornwall and batsman Steve Liburd. Coach Ridley Jacobs said his team will be a formidable opponent. "I think this game we will be hoping to improve on our performances. When we bat we lose a lot of wickets in clusters - it is important that the batsman builds partnerships, and that is one of the areas that we have to work on. "I think we have been preparing well [and] we are quite ready for this challenge. Once these players play to their true potential, we should give a good showing and hopefully at the end of the day we will be the better team," he told the Jamaica Observer.

First Published In The Jamaica Observer.

Jamaica 24/3