The captain of the Jamaican cricket team was pleased with their victory, even though they did not win the shield. He shared that the players did their best but were plagued by anxiety, and that contributed to them not finishing on top.

Published Tuesday, April 27, 1971

Jamaica by 147 runs …

First Shell Shield win over Barbados

By Freddie Smith

JAMAICA, for the first time since the inception of the Shell Shield cricket competition, gained their first victory over Barbados, two–time winners of the Shield since 1966, when they defeated them yesterday afternoon by 147 runs, with 117 minutes to spare, on the final day of their four-day match at Sabina Park.

Yesterday’s victory placed Jamaica in second position in this year’s competition with 28 points, and it was the first time in 13 years that the local team was gaining such a reward against Barbados, whom they last defeated at Melbourne Park in 1958.

So far, Barbados has had two holds on the Shield, in 1966 and 1967. There was no competition in 1968 and Jamaica won in 1969.

Trinidad, who like Jamaica completed their final fixture yesterday in Guyana, won last year and retained the Shield this year.

The final scores in the match at Sabina Park yesterday, which ended at 2:33 p.m. when Jamaica and West Indies’ fast bowler Uton Dowe uprooted the stumps of the Barbados No. 11 man, Courtney Selman, before a small but enthusiastic crowd, were: Jamaica 293 and 277, Barbados 232 and 191.

Fighting cricket

The Barbadian team are due to return home at 5:00 p.m. today..

It was a little more than three-and-a-half days of fighting cricket, with Jamaica deserving their victory, which skipper Easton McMorris said after the match was “a triumph” not only for Jamaica but for himself, as it was his ambition ever since taking over the leadership of the Jamaica team to beat Barbados. 

McMorris thought that, although Jamaica did not win the Shield, they played the best cricket and it was just a bit of over-anxiety on most occasions by the younger players, especially in their first match against Trinidad, to whom they lost in the first innings, why Jamaica did not come out on top.

Apart from Nurse’s half-century yesterday, a brisk knock of 30 by Anthony King, and an inspired spell by the Jamaica and West Indies off-spinner Maurice Foster in the morning session, there was little in the day’s play after Jamaica’s early breakthrough. Foster took 2 for 15 in a nine-over spell, Dowe cleaned up the tail with 3 for 38, and Barrett, the right-arm wrist spinner, who never found his true form, took 3 for 63.

Barbados batted for 213 minutes.

In all, the Sabina wicket was a sporting one on which 993 runs were scored off 345-1 overs for 40 wickets.

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