KINGSTON–Ryan Hinds has dis­missed sug­ges­tions that his Bar­ba­dos side have be­come chok­ers. This fol­lowed their his­toric tie with Lee­ward Is­lands that con­demned the two sides to share the WICB Re­gion­al One-day ti­tle, fol­low­ing the Grand Fi­nal of this year's com­pe­ti­tion on Sun­day at Sabi­na Park. "At the end of the day, it is crick­et that we are play­ing," said a teary-eyed Hinds in a post-match in­ter­view. "I won't say that the guys went about the crick­et care­less­ly. "What I will say is that we were put un­der pres­sure. We lost ear­ly wick­ets, and you know how that can go in a fi­nal."

Tino Best failed to beat wick­et­keep­er Jah­mar Hamil­ton's di­rect hit at the bowler's end, as Bar­ba­dos, chas­ing 140 for vic­to­ry from their al­lo­ca­tion of 50 overs, nar­row­ly failed to limp over the thresh­old, with an in­cred­i­ble 72 balls re­main­ing in the match. It has been a tough year for Bar­ba­dos–and re­gion­al crick­et ti­tles. They fin­ished be­hind Ja­maica in the WICB Re­gion­al first-class cham­pi­onship ear­li­er in the year, and were run­ners-up to Guyana in the Caribbean Twen­ty20 Cup last Ju­ly, which have led to sug­ges­tions of Hinds and his side be­ing chok­ers. "Ob­vi­ous­ly, our guys are a bit gut­ted that we are shar­ing the ti­tle," said Hinds. "We put our­selves in a po­si­tion to win this game, as I thought that we bowled re­al­ly well as a team."

"We field­ed ex­cel­lent­ly through­out the tour­na­ment, but I thought that we lost wick­ets at some cru­cial stages, and some very un­for­tu­nate run outs." Hinds praised his side for play­ing un­beat­en through­out the tour­na­ment, and ef­fec­tive­ly gave Bar­ba­dos their sixth re­gion­al One-day ti­tle. "We tried, and we are very tired," he said. "We worked re­al­ly hard through­out the tour­na­ment, and I'm very hap­py that we were still able to share the ti­tle. "We need to be more as­sertive, but I'm very hap­py with the unit that the se­lec­tors came up with in this tour­na­ment."