First-Class Matches West Indies 1989/90 to 1998/99

108 West Indies in 1993/94 Lara’s batting alone could not, however, bring the Red Stripe Cup back to Port of Spain. But after finishing last in the previous season, and winless in the last two, it did help to move Trinidad & Tobago up to second place in 1993/94, five points behind the Leeward Islands, who secured the title for just the second time. In the end, it all turned on the match between the two sides early in the competition, which the Leewards won by an innings. They were fortunate to meet Lara just one match before the start of his purplest of purple patches. As well as having the competition’s leading batsman, Trinidad & Tobago also had its leading wicket-taker, in the shape of leg-spinner Rajindra Dhanraj who took 30 wickets at 15.70. But over the season as a whole it was the Test stars who took the bowling honours, both Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh ending the season with 45 wickets (at 16.46 and 23.28 respectively), closely followed by Kenny Benjamin with 42 at 25.14. Lara of course led the way among the batsmen, his aggregate of 1,513 runs at 89.00 setting a new season’s record for a home player in the West Indies, beating Lawrence Rowe’s figure of 1,117 in 1973/74. Along the way he also set a new record for the most catches by a fielder in a West Indian season with 23, beating Patsy Hendren’s record of 20 set in 1929/30, and equalled the Shell Shield/Red Stripe Cup record of 14 catches in a single season. Overall, not too bad a year then – and his best was still to come. But in Wisden Tony Cozier noted a cloud on the horizon, when he wrote that, in the region as a whole, “young fast bowlers of quality [are] scarce”. Already the West Indies, despite Brian Lara’s triumphs, were acknowledged to be no longer the batting force that they had been. If finally their production-line of world-beating pace bowlers, on which they had placed so much reliance for so long, was now coming to an end, the future for the West Indian side was surely less secure than at any time over the previous 20 years. RED STRIPE CUP 1993/94: FINAL TABLE P W L LWF DWF DLF ND Pts 1 Leeward Islands 5 3 0 1 1 0 0 61 2 Trinidad & Tobago 5 3 1 0 1 0 0 56 3 Guyana 5 1 0 1 2 0 1 41 4 Jamaica 5 1 2 0 1 1 0 28 5 Barbados 5 0 0 0 1 3 1 24 6 Windward Islands 5 0 3 0 0 2 0 8