One would have thought that Ramnaresh Sarwan had promised to share the (Guy) $200 million first prize with his brethren living in Antigua.

And they were not very gracious in victory, I might add, with the colourful language that was hurled at Trinidadian supporters in the crowd. It was only after warning a particularly hostile group of young men that I was a senior official of the Antigua Immigration Department did they begin to deport themselves properly.

Yes, Antigua is one of those enclaves that the Guyanese and Jamaicans to a lesser extent, have been able to fashion a home away from home.

I don’t know if Antiguans work at all because I met so many people with Guyanese and Jamaican accents around the island, selling T-shirts, or serving meals and drinks, or waving batons, the latter being the preferred career for most Guyanese one would easily surmise after a jaunt around the island.

Those accents are the easiest to pick up on and that’s why, perhaps, I concluded that.

It was embarrassing to lose the final though because the Guyanese made such an issue of our West Indian rivalry.

I always thought of them as our South American cousins but the way they vented their feelings after winning the tournament I have decided to stop buying from any street vendor in Port of Spain.

Ganga had a superb tournament but he must have been thinking about raising our game a notch for the final and that did not happen.

For example, in hindsight, T&T did not use the experience of Ricardo Powell’s 100-plus ODI matches for the West Indies and he ended a tournament with precious little runs.

The youngsters at the top of the batting order, Mario Belcon, William Perkins and Kieron Pollard, did very well, but the team, I reckon, would have been better served using Powell at the top of the order during the final, especially with the fielding restrictions for the first six overs.

Powell had not contributed but is still arguably, one of the better lofted-hitters in the regional game and he and Perkins may have done better than the 44 runs T&T made in the first six overs using Belcon and Perkins as the opening partnership.

I think the opening pair was 16 runs short and that’s where T&T lost the game.

Our total of 175 was insufficient and should have been closer to 190 for the final.

When the final over was being bowled, Guyana only needed 14 runs and on a small ground like the Stanford Cricket Ground, the bowling team is asking for trouble.

That leads us to Ganga’s second but less critical miscalculation.

Badree had a marvellous tournament but asking a decent club cricketer to bowl the final over in such an important game when you have an alternative -- a West Indian Test bowler, Mervyn Dillon, in your line-up is pure folly.

Badree bowling length balls in the final over to Sarwan and Deonarine -- both batsmen have Test experience -- are going over the fence!

T&T needed a medium pacer bowling yorkers or low full tosses at varying pace -- the faster you bowl the easier to hit -- to have denied Guyana those 14 runs; a leggie pitching length ball was too much of a gamble.

Nevertheless, the young T&T team lost nothing in defeat and one would think that the national 20/20 team lost with much in hand, with so many of our top players unavailable due to commitments in England with the West Indies “A” team.

The 20/20 Super Stars team to meet South Africa in November was a rather strange team because of one omission, and I must make a point of it despite the fact that the US$5 million winner-take-all 20/20 match may never happen given the date for the start of the West Indies tour to Pakistan.

Carlton Baugh Jr. was selected as one of the wicketkeeper batsmen but Jamaica were knocked out at the quarter-final stage by Guyana, while T&T’s wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin got his team to the final and his 14-ball undefeated 38 in the showpiece match was the best example of clinical hitting by a Trinidadian batsman on the night, and those were runs made against the best team in the tournament.

It was a great tournament for the smaller teams and Stanford has to be praised for his vision, for opening doors for countries like Nevis and Grenada, the losing teams at the semi-final stage.

Grenada got four selections in the Super Stars team while Nevis got one and it may be realistic to assume that only Rawle Lewis may make the cut when the team is short-listed, the opportunity presented itself for those players to make their mark against more illustrious players.

Of the youngsters, Grenada’s Andre Fletcher, T&T Kieron Pollard and Anguilla’s 15-year-old pacer Kelbert Walters look like players with a future … the only question is whether it will be a 20/20 future or will they be players for the more traditional forms of the game.

Stanford has brought a new dynamism to regional cricket with his 20/20 Tournament, but there is no way the International Cricket Council (ICC) is ever going to make 20/20 matches the standard bearer for the game.