Vin­ode Mam­chan

The T&T Crick­et Board (T&TCB) has de­cid­ed to change the bonus points sys­tem in do­mes­tic crick­et in a bid to root out cor­rup­tion in the sport. This, ac­cord­ing to chair­man of the Na­tion­al League Dud­nath Ramkessoon. The for­mer West In­dies Un­der-19 cap­tain has been charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of tak­ing lo­cal crick­et to an­oth­er lev­el and one of the ma­jor stum­bling blocks, has been bonus points cor­rup­tion.

Speak­ing to the Guardian, Ram­keesoon ex­plained :"We have had to deal with a num­ber of is­sues, of teams claim­ing that oth­ers have 'fixed' match­es by ma­nip­u­lat­ing the bonus points sys­tem. At the end of the sea­son the T&TCB and the Zones all have to deal with is­sues like this and some­times you can­not crown a win­ner at the end of the sea­son be­cause you are await­ing judge­ment on cer­tain games that have been brought be­fore the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee."

As a way of curb­ing the prac­tice of teams 'ar­rang­ing re­sults' to win ti­tles or avoid de­mo­tion, the T&TCB is now propos­ing that the num­ber of bonus points be less than the num­ber of points award­ed for a win.

A win car­ries 16 points and un­der the new struc­ture, on­ly a to­tal off 12 bonus points will be avail­able. The max­i­mum num­ber of points a team can achieve in a match is 28 points. Ac­cord­ing to Ramkessoon: "While it is very dif­fi­cult to to­tal­ly erad­i­cate cor­rup­tion with the bonus points sys­tem, we think that this sys­tem will go a long way in curb­ing the prac­tice." The most num­ber of bat­ting points avail­able will be six points, while the most num­ber of bowl­ing points avail­able is six.

If a team scores 500 runs in their first in­nings, they will get six points. If they bat a sec­ond time, they would not get any bat­ting points, as they would have ex­haust­ed their al­lo­ca­tion in the first in­nings. In bowl­ing, three points will be giv­en for bowl­ing out a team, if this is done twice, a to­tal off six points are avail­able. Ramkessoon added: "We think that giv­ing the most points for a win, will al­so lead to pos­i­tive crick­et. Teams will now want to go for the win in or­der to get 16 points and this would lead to more at­trac­tive crick­et." Present­ly the T&TCB has pre­pared a doc­u­ment for cir­cu­la­tion among the clubs and then a fi­nal de­ci­sion will be made af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with them.