Devendra Bishoo

While the Windies have produced top-quality spinners in the shortest format of the game, with the likes of Devendra Bishoo and Sunil Narine.  The fact that neither has really made the transition to the red-ball format, means it is another area that continues to be lacking for the team.

 In fact, it could be argued that the last West Indies world-class spinner to dominate Test cricket was Lance Gibbs who represented the team in the 60s and 70s.  Gibbs claimed 309 Test wickets.  Creating another player of Gibbs caliber, for Test cricket, is not a simple process.

“It’s a combination of quite a few things.  The first thing is to keep making sure that we encourage spin bowling throughout the region, but also to ensure that the environment in which they are developing their skill is one that can develop world-class slow bowling,” Adams told the Mason and Guest radio program.

In the West Indies regional tournaments, it is spinners that have dominated the bowling in recent years.  For at least the last five years a spinner has taken the most wickets in the WICB Regional 4-day tournament. The honour has been achieved by Rahkeem Cornwall, with Veerasammy Permaul and Nikita Miller achieving it twice.

“Good cricket wickets play a big role in player development, not just spinners but obviously it does for spinners as well.  The Indian spinners in the 90s proved that if you didn’t have wickets that got outside your region, you would struggle whenever you went outside the region,” he added.

“Also, though, we have to improve the quality of batting against spin bowling because spin bowlers also develop their craft by bowling to good batsmen.  You don’t want a spinner to see high-quality batting for the first time when they leave the region.”

Kamran Akmal got the Warriors off to a great start as he smashed two boundaries in the first two overs. However, he fell to Devendra Bishoo for 12 runs off 9 balls in the third over. Tillakaratne Dilshan kept the Warriors' hopes alive with a flurry of boundaries, but he was run out for 43 runs off 27 balls in the ninth over. 

Irfan Pathan bowled a fantastic final over to close out the match for the California Knights. He conceded just 5 runs in the last over of the match.

Earlier in the day, California Knights won the toss and chose to bat first. Aaron Finch got their innings going through a string of boundaries, however, he was dismissed by Abdur Rehman for 24 runs off 12 balls in the third over. Thereafter, the Knights kept losing wickets at regular intervals, however, they continued to bat at a decent strike rate. 

Ashley Nurse struck a couple of sixes in the last two overs and helped the Knights reach 106/5 in their 10 overs.

The Jaguars, thanks to 189 from skipper Leon Johnson, and 107 from Christopher Barnwell had made light work of the Volcanoes’ 318 all-out in the first innings, scoring 426.

That 318 was made on the back of half-centuries from Kaveem Hodge, 53, Keron Cottoy, 56, and Shane Shillingford, 53.

Devendra Bishoo, 4-73, and Veerasammy Permaul, 4-59, were the best of the Jaguars bowling before their batsmen found it easy going to score 426.

Batting a second time, the Volcanoes made it to 46-1 at the close of play on the third day.

Devon Smith, 16, and Hodge, 17, are the not-out batsmen with Cato the only man back in the pavilion, falling leg-before off the bowling of Raymon Reifer.