Last weekend I was among the scores of cricket fans at the Elgin Town Sports Ground in Hanover who had the privilege of seeing the Hanover parish team defying the odds by upstaging their Kingston counterparts Lucas CC in their big national Senior Cup semi-final showdown.

While the win brought a lot of joy to the west since it earned Hanover a place in this weekend's final against former national champions, Kensington, as far as I am concerned, the most pleasing aspect of the game was the batting of 16-year-old schoolboy Jermaine Blackwood, whose masterful 48 runs was the foundation for Hanover's success.

Although I am not fully conversant with the domestic cricket programme in Hanover, based on the quality I saw last weekend, it is quite obvious that something positive is happening in the parish. In fact, with the vast number of exciting young players in the team, the parish should be a forced to be reckoned with for a long time to come.

misery and disappointment

As I drove back home to Montego Bay after the game ended on Sunday, my thoughts drifted from the success of the Hanover team to the dismal state of cricket in St James. My joy quickly turned to despair as, while Hanover has justifiable reasons to be proud of its cricket, St James is all misery and disappointment.

The situation in St James is made even more distressing when one reflects on the fact that, 10 to 15 years ago, St James was the pride of rural Jamaica cricket. The parish's Hart Cup competition was almost up to the first class standard as it regularly featured stars such as former West Indies captain Jimmy Adams and other national players such as Richard Staple, Cleveland Davidson, Nigel Kennedy, Wilbert Plummer, Franz and Larry Cunning and Nehemiah Perry.

To the chagrin of persons like myself, who still hold fond memories of the glorious days of the 1980s and early 1990s when many weekends were spent watching top-flight club cricket from teams such as Riahs, Providence, Seawind, MoBay Cricket Club and Jet Set, it is a total, if not absolute, disgrace that domestic cricket is no longer played in St James.

What I find absolutely incredible about the situation in St James is the fact that, while the parish has no active clubs and therefore no affiliates, it still has a cricket board that is recognised by the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA). It would be interesting to know on what basis this board is considered legitimate.

To make the St James situation even more ridiculous is the fact that, although the parish has no domestic competition and no obvious way of identifying and developing talent, the parish still has a team competing in the national Senior Cup Cricket Competition. Unless I am terribly mistaken, this situation is a colossal fraud and needs to be investigated by the JCA.

failing cricket board

If the mandate of the St James Cricket Board is to organise competitions and develop cricket in the parish, it is definitely not meeting that mandate. It therefore means that as the parent body for cricket in Jamaica, the JCA needs to cut ties with this board and take steps to regularise the admin-istration of the sports in the parish.

It is not surprising to me that while its neighbours, West-moreland and Trelawny, are now competing in the Super League, and Hanover is just a win away from joining them, James' cricket is no more than an absolute joke, lacking in structure and substance and having far more vices than virtues

If the JCA is serious about its mandate to develop Jamaica's cricket in totality, it must take immediate steps to put an end to this administrative farce in St James and establish an interim board to put the parish's cricket back on track. With people like respected cricket umpires Steve Bucknor and Cecil Fletcher, noted administrator like Adrian Grant and Jerry Reid, we have people with the competence to reorganise domestic cricket in the parish.

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adrianfrater@hotmail.com