Before it started, there were fears that the Lions would destroy everybody and finish way ahead of the opposition. That said, the regional teams made a good showing, in particular Jamaica, Trinidad and the CCC, and the Lions finished third, despite some positive captaincy from Hidreth, who was clearly trying to win matches with bold declarations. But it seems that the Lions lacked a little edge in the bowling, aside from Briggs and Dernbach of course. YOu know the old adage - batting saves matches, but bowling wins matches. The other bowlers either didn't play enough, or were inconsistent. However, as the stats below show, the batting was very good. Maybe the only criticism that could be made was about how slow the Lions batted at times (Kieswetter apart), sometimes at less than three runs an over, which didn't give their bowlers enough time to bowl out the opposition.
These are the batsmen who've scored more than 400 runs....
1) Marlon Samuels 750 runs ave 68.18 (Jamaica)
2) James Hildreth 546 runs ave 60.66 (England Lions)
3) James Taylor 527 runs ave 58.55 (England Lions)
4) Andre Fletcher 522 runs ave 40.15 (Windward Islands)
5) Darren Ganga 513 runs ave 73.28 (Trinidad & Tobago)
Spinners have once again dominated, but it was good to see fast bowlers Edwards, Gabriel, Matthew and Pascal among the leading wicket-takers, and Jerome Taylor would've been there too, before he got injured....
Medium-pacers Emrit, Peters and Brathwaite also took quite a few wickets.