While most of the Premier League teams take a weekend off, four evenly-matched sides will battle for the first piece of silverware up for grabs this season...the popular Camel Cup.
Defending champions and the most successful team in the competition, St.
George's, will be hoping their experience will give them a decisive edge over a Southampton Rangers team who are playing in the Cup for the first time.
That semi-final at Sea Breeze Oval today promises to be an exciting one, as should be the match at Devonshire Rec. between powerhouses Western Stars and Bailey's Bay.
The winners will meet in the final tomorrow at St. David's, the preferred venue for this final during the 1990s when seven of the 10 finals were staged there, including the last three.
St. George's have won the competition more times than any other team, five in all if including their 1988 win when the tournament was known as the Premier Cup.
The two-time defending champions are the only team to win the competition three straight years (1988, '89 and '90) and are attempting to repeat that feat, though two tough sides will attempt to make sure that doesn't happen.
The east enders have appeared in the last five finals and while there will be little separating them from Rangers on current form, the champions should be slight favourites based on their Camel Cup record. Rangers, while never having played in the Cup before, are the 1999 league champions and will be hoping that the new millennium brings more good fortune.
One Camel Cup fact they may want to consider is that only four teams -- St.
George's, Devonshire Rec, Western Stars and Bailey's Bay -- have won this most elusive of all local cups in its 13-year history.
Janeiro Tucker is Rangers' most explosive batsman and his wicket will be a prized one, though there are others just as capable with the bat, including openers Keith Wainwright and David Stoneham, former captain Olin Jones, Kwame Tucker and player-coach Clevie Wade, who has won the Camel Cup with St.
George's.
These days, without Wade, Wendell and Clay Smith, St. George's aren't nearly as formidable as in the batting department. But anything in the region of 200 is usually good enough for them to defend, with a bowling attack that contains captain Herbie Bascome, Gregg Foggo, Ricky Hodsoll, Eugene Foggo, Mark Ray and Graham Fox who is back with the club this season.
Foggo has not played since the opening day of the season but was back in training this week and his return will boost the spin department where David Adams is still missing.
There was one record St. George's were happy to lose last season, that of scoring the lowest total in the competition. In 1996, Western Stars dismissed them for a embarrassing 62, but last year they bowled out a strong Bay side for just 61 after scoring just 126 themselves when batting first.
A big score could come at Devonshire Rec. where both Stars and Bay are capable of hitting plenty of runs.
Stars have lots of experience with the likes of Arnold Manders, Treadwell Gibbons and Ricky Brangman still key figures in the batting department.
They have also picked up a couple of new players, South African all-rounder Saleem Mukudem and Bermudian youngster Sam Stevens to strengthen the batting.
New captain Albert Steede will have a lot of responsibility at the top of the order, while there is also Jermaine Postlethwaite at number three and Cleon Scotland in the middle order.
Stars' bowling, led by seamers Mukudem and Stevens and spinners Manders and Hasan Durham, will be tested by the free scoring Bay batsmen. The Eastern Counties team have Ricky Hill, Jermaine Warner, Irving Romaine, captain Charlie Marshall and Corey Hill to call on for their runs, along with veteran Noel Gibbons who is combining coaching with playing this season.
Warner, born in the Bay area and rejoining the team from Willow Cuts, is their top scorer after three matches with two half-centuries and a knock of 46 not out.
The Duckworth/Lewis system will be utilised this weekend for the first time if any of the Camel Cup matches are affected by rain.
The system is being used for Camel Cup, Knockout and Champion of Champions matches only.
The D/L system sets revised targets in rain-interrupted limited-overs matches in accordance with relative run scoring `resources' which are at the disposal of the two sides.
"These are not in direct proportion to the number of overs available to be faced as with the average run rate method of correction,'' the ruling states.
"Instead, they depend on how many overs are to go and how many wickets are down when the interruption occurs. To calculate the revised targets, you need to know the `resources' (wickets in hand and overs remaining) available at the stage of the match when suspensions and resumption of play occur.'' All the possible values of resources have been pre-calculated and furnished in a table, which the umpires at the Camel Cup matches will have in their possession.
"It's going to be a challenge for a lot of the guys, even the scorers,'' acknowledged top umpire Randy Butler.
"I first worked with it in 1997 at the ICC Tournament in Malaysia. Then in January, 1999, I was invited back to the Caribbean to participate in a seminar when the West Indies were introducing it to their competitions. George Francis went back there in October, 1999, to work with it in lectures.'' Butler believes the Duckworth/Lewis system is a fair way of adjusting the target and overs in the case of a rain delay.
"This is a fairer way of doing the calculations in interrupted overs matches so as to come to a target score,'' said Butler.
"The other way was always a piece of cake for the team batting second, by knowing what score they had to chase and the resources available.'' Matches on both days start at noon and are 50 overs per side.
