FROM THE BOUNDARY By Tony Becca
AT THE end of the Busta Series cricket match between Jamaica and the Leeward Islands which gets underway in Discovery Bay tomorrow, someone, possibly with the help of others, will select the man of the match - the outstanding player in the match, and more than likely, he will make the right selection.
That usually is the case.
There have been times, however, when mistakes have been made, or when it appears that mistakes have been made, and all because there is no clear guideline or guidelines as to who is the man of a match.
Is it the player who makes the highest score in an innings or the one takes the most wickets in an innings? Is it the player who, even though he does not make the highest score in any of the innings or take the most wickets in any off the innings, makes the most runs or takes the most wickets in the match?
Is it the player who, looking at batting, bowling and fielding. is the most successful player in the match? Is it the player who makes the greatest impact on the match as far as the contest is concerned? Or is it the player who had the greatest impact on the match as far as the result is concerned?
As one who has served as an adjudicator, as one who has been close to many who have decided man of the match awards, as one who knows that different people have different ideas, as one who knows, some of it from personal experience, that there have been many heated arguments between adjudicators and the managers before a decision is reached for the simple reason that in close situations the managers most times go for their players, these are questions that need to be answered if the man of the match award is to mean anything to the players and the fans.
Right now, certainly at the first-class level and certainly in the West Indies, the man of the match award means little or nothing - and it is not only that the financial reward to the star performer of a match is so small.
It is also because both players and spectators have come to the conclusion that it is simply a choice between the player who makes the most runs or who takes the most wickets, or someone's idea of what is a good performance - even if it, as far as the result is concerned, it had little influence.
The man of the match should be the player who has made the greatest impact on the contest, the man of the match should be the player whose performance had the greatest influence on the result, if that is so, then barring exceptional circumstances, barring a performance by one from the losing side so much better than anyone else, the man of the match should be from the winning team, and if all that is so, then the man of the match for the Jamaica/Barbados match which ended at Sabina Park on Sunday should have been Darrell Powell and not Gareth Breese.
As an all-rounder, Breese did well. As a bowler, however, Powell was brilliant, his performance was the best, it had the greatest impact on the match, it set the tempo early and it influenced the result more than any other. It was the performance that rocked Barbados and sent Jamaica on the way.
It was, without a doubt, the decisive performance in the match.
