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On Friday Bermuda cricket enters a new phase, as the island participates in its first ever West Indies inter-island 20-20 competition.

What I have seen of the Stanford 20-20 tournament thus far has been very impressive; the television coverage is first class, the commentating superb and the cricket itself fiercely competitive.

It is a shame that three of our best cricketers will not be making the journey to Antigua.

National team skipper Clay Smith, Charlie Marshall and Glenn Blakeney would without a doubt have strengthened the team's batting considerably; all three are naturally aggressive and have the ability to 'decorate' the scoreboard in record time.

Blakeney in particular will be a miss, as he might have provided the answer to some of the problems we have been experiencing at the top of the batting order for longer than I care to remember.

Nevertheless, the team is a good one and it will be interesting to see how they perform against a strong Jamaican outfit which contains the likes of Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels, Jermaine Lawson and Xavier Marshall and are considered one of the favourites to win the tournament.

If Bermuda is to be successful there must be a very good all-round team effort.

The fielding must be sharp, the bowling tight and the batsmen prepared to exercise controlled aggression without becoming reckless.

Despite the odds against us I believe Bermuda stand a good chance of upsetting Jamaica and winning the match primarily because of the following three reasons.

First of all, we are more experienced at playing this form of the game than Jamaica is.

It must be remembered that Bermuda recently participated in the 20-20 Classic on local soil in March defeating both the West Indies and England en route to the final.

Second, in Gus Logie we have a coach who is familiar with many of our Jamaican opponents, having coached many of them at both senior and youth level so he knows their strengths and weaknesses.

Of course, our team can use that knowledge to their advantage.

On the other hand our players will be something of an unknown quantity to the Jamaicans and hopefully by the time they figure them out the damage will be done.

Third, the reason we lost the final of the 20-20 Classic was because both our strike bowlers Ryan Steede and Kevin Hurdle — to be frank — bowled badly they were too short and too wide.

I don't think George O'Brien and Saleem Mukuddem will make the same mistake in Antigua, which should help to keep the Jamaican batsmen under control.

Finally, I am looking forward to seeing our team in action on the television.

We will all get to see what a Bermuda national team looks like under the scrutiny of the multiple cameras and hear what objective world renowned commentators like Tony Cozier and Ian Bishop think of them.

It promises to be a mouth-watering prospect![[In-content Ad]]

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