Guyana may have won a mediocre tour­na­ment (though filled with ex­cit­ing match­es), but there is noth­ing in their per­for­mance to send shiv­ers down the spine of any of the oth­er teams which will be com­pet­ing in South Africa. To par­tic­i­pate in the Cham­pi­ons League, Guyana will need a lot of spe­cial in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances, and the truth is Guyana does not pos­sess the cal­i­bre of play­ers to pro­duce any­thing spe­cial. This team is just not up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard and will be a poor rep­re­sen­ta­tive for this re­gion. Guyana was not the best team in the tour­na­ment. Rather they were the best per­form­ing team in the cur­rent for­mat, which is why the WICB will need to re­vis­it the for­mat of this tour­na­ment. Cer­tain­ly a lot more match­es should be played on a pos­si­ble home and away ba­sis.Guyana is a fight­ing team but you sense they played at their op­ti­mum and can go no fur­ther. The sur­faces in South Africa will favour some pace and swing bowl­ing but the Guyanese bowlers lack qual­i­ty pace and their lead­ing bats­men, Ramnaresh Sar­wan, Travis Dowl­in, Nars­ingh De­onar­ine and Siew­nar­ine Chat­ter­goon strug­gle against qual­i­ty fast bowl­ing.

I am afraid Guyana may cre­ate such a poor im­pres­sion, that they will erode the good­will as we look to earn two places in fu­ture IPL Cham­pi­ons League tour­na­ments. While they have un­earthed a bristling young tal­ent with tremen­dous po­ten­tial in 19-year-old Jonathan Foo, they must be care­ful as to how he is nur­tured. There were some ear­ly in­di­ca­tions he may be ar­ro­gant, which is the curse that dom­i­nates our tal­ent­ed young­sters, even in T&T. But some­times, con­fi­dence may be mis­tak­en for ar­ro­gance. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Foo will need to im­prove his strength work and be care­ful of his eat­ing habits, less he falls in­to the same trap as Sar­wan and De­onar­ine who have both put on too much weight in the wrong places. Guyana's fit­ness, both men­tal and phys­i­cal, will be cru­cial in South Africa and there­fore their over­all field­ing will have to im­prove. But it is not on­ly in their bat­ting that Guyana will have prob­lems. Their bowl­ing al­so has con­straints. Do we re­al­ly be­lieve that the bats­men in the Cham­pi­on League will have sleep­less nights think­ing of Guyana's open­ing bowlers, Eu­suan Cran­don and Christo­pher Barn­well or worse yet, will they be mes­mer­ized by Lennox Cush lol­lipops or De­ven­dra Bishoo's spin.

I hope the Guyanese pop­u­la­tion is not too an­noyed by my ob­ser­va­tions.

I am do­ing this so their ex­pec­ta­tions will not be too high. My fear is there will be so much ex­pect­ed of these Guyanese play­ers that un­less we are open and hon­est, they will be shell shocked and dev­as­tat­ed if they are hu­mil­i­at­ed and shamed in South Africa. The West In­dies Crick­et Board can start im­me­di­ate­ly to have a prop­er set-up for the team be­fore and af­ter they re­turn from this tour­na­ment. If you ex­am­ine the list of teams com­pet­ing, one can un­der­stand the predica­ment they will be in. These are all pro­fes­sion­al­ly run or­gan­i­sa­tions with prop­er team struc­tures in every de­part­ment, with the play­ers on­ly re­quired to con­cen­trate on the field. Guyana, as most of the teams in the Caribbean, will not have that sort of or­gan­i­sa­tion. In­stead it may very well be more one of dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion, es­pe­cial­ly as this cur­rent Guyanese team per­formed so well amidst re­ports that they would be sacked be­fore the semi­fi­nal if they at­tempt­ed to cov­er up a spon­sor's name on their cloth­ing. This con­tin­ues to be the prob­lem with the WICB, the role of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards in ig­nor­ing the ba­sic prin­ci­ple of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights.

So let us be hon­est, Guyana will not on­ly fail to progress past the first round but in their group with Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore and Mum­bai In­di­ans, South Aus­tralian Red­backs and South Africa's High­veld Li­ons, they face the prospect of los­ing all their pre­lim­i­nary match­es. Can any­one say that Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, Kevin Pietersen and Cameron White will be rel­ish­ing the thought of fac­ing Guyana's spin twins of Cush and Bishoo? It will be like tak­ing can­dy from a ba­by for these men, who have been brought up on a di­et of qual­i­ty spin bowlers. Even Sachin Ten­dulkar will be hap­py and so too Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard who will both get a chance to ex­act re­venge on their Caribbean op­po­nents. Shahid Afri­di of South Aus­tralian Red­backs will be lick­ing his chops at the thoughts of hav­ing Team Guyana as a suc­cu­lent dessert. And let us not the for­get play­ers Neil McKen­zie, Alvi­ro Pe­tersen, An­dre Nel and a new and La­sith Ma­lin­ga. Guyana's first match will be on Sep­tem­ber 12, at Cen­tu­ri­on and their last of four match­es in the first round on Sep­tem­ber 21, against High­veld Li­ons at Jo­han­nes­burg. It is not Guyana's fault that they played on­ly three se­ri­ous match­es to reach the fi­nals. We need to en­sure that rain does not al­low us to be rep­re­sent­ed poor­ly in the fu­ture.

There is lit­tle doubt that both T&T and Ja­maica are best equipped to han­dle over­seas bat­tles based on their re­cent his­to­ry and the qual­i­ty of their play­ers. T&T lost be­cause they had one ter­ri­ble game and then got their bat­ting or­der wrong. I still felt they could have won if De­nesh Ramdin had used his brain in­stead of try­ing brawn. Ja­maica on the oth­er hand, played as if some of their play­ers did not want to be there. Paul Camp­bell and his man­age­ment pro­duced a team un­der a bad­ly over­weight Tamar Lam­bert who was a dis­as­ter with bat and ball. Chris Gayle, one of the world's best T20 play­ers nev­er set­tled. He def­i­nite­ly did not look like he was sup­port­ing Lam­bert and his close friends, Wavell Hinds and Mar­lon Samuels, were no dif­fer­ent. But Guyana have done what it had to do to get to South Africa. So con­grat­u­la­tions. But they will fall short un­less they can make some changes and ad­di­tions. That, in it­self is a prob­lem since man­age­ment will hes­i­tate to change a win­ning team. They will need a qual­i­ty open­ing fast bowler and at least two fit bats­men. It is not too late for Guyana to make these changes, start­ing with the re­turn of Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, oth­er­wise they must pre­pare them­selves for ab­ject hu­mil­i­a­tion and hith­er­to, we in the Caribbean as well. So be it then.