A female sport personality, a University student and one of Guyana Jaguars’ biggest fans, Natisha Mokutnauth reflected on the team’s recent Regional 4-Day season. During her extended analysis, she had mixed emotions.
“While I am not utterly disappointed – they have won five consecutive seasons –- I still expected a better performance. I think the team lacked consistency in both our batting and bowling departments – one more than the other, of course.”
“In regards to the batting, they needed to do more. In previous years, 2018-2019 perhaps, we had four centuries, two coming from the same batsman. This year we had two batsmen scoring a century each, so that says a lot,” Mokutnauth stated.
In the 2018-2019 season, Anthony Bramble was the batsman with two centuries. In the 2020 season, Leon Johnson and Christopher Barnwell were the only two centurions. “Now, when we have a weak batting department, that automatically pressures the bowlers, because they only have so much to defend, or they might bowl a team out cheaply, but have to be back out soon after bowling because our team followed suit. In this department, I had higher expectation, because our batting line-up did not have any major changes or any at all in some games.
These are seasoned players and when we are only scoring 94 in a Four-Day game, it leaves a window for disappointment in fans,” she noted. Expanding on the bowling unit, she had this to say: “now for the bowling camp, while we had the top bowler in terms of wickets in the form of Veerasammy Permaul (who came in second last year, so it’s no surprise or big change), we still lacked consistency from the other bowlers.
“We have Nial Smith who started the tournament brilliantly, picking up wickets while bowling at decent speeds. However, he failed to carry the momentum through and was eventually out of the squad. Consistency is key in anything we do.” “Now they just need to regroup (whenever that is safe to do), go back to the drawing board, and come better next season. I’ll be rooting for them,” the super fan concluded.