REGIONAL powerhouses Jamaica, hunting a sixth straight four-day crown, meet fierce rivals Trinidad & Tobago in the semi-final match of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) first-class tournament at Sabina Park in Kingston, starting today at 10:00 am.

The Tamar Lambert-captained Jamaicans, who finished top of the preliminary standings with maximum points, are on a remarkable 15-match win-streak in four-day cricket that spans three seasons. All six wins this season have ended inside three days.

Jamaica have been guided this season by left-arm finger spinner Nikita Miller, who has snatched 46 wickets in six matches at an incredible average of 7.54. He has been well supported by wrist-spinner Odean Brown, pacer Andrew Richardson and left-arm quick Sheldon Cotterell.

The young Trinidad & Tobago team, coached by former West Indies wicketkeeper David Williams, had three victories and as many losses to finish in fourth place.

Seamer Rayad Emrit has led the way with 16 victims at 20.93, while leg-spinning all-rounder Imran Khan has 15 wickets at 15.73.

Trinidad & Tobago are without influential players Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, Sunil Narine and Ravi Rampaul — all plying their trade in the Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 (T20) competition.

Jamaica’s star left-hander Christopher Gayle also misses out due to the IPL, and middle-order batsman Marlon Samuels, who returned recently from India, is reportedly recovering from an injury.

When the teams met earlier in the season at Sabina, Jamaica won the low-scoring four-day encounter convincingly, but suffered a narrow defeat in the Super50 contest which followed.

In the four-day affair, the quicker bowlers — particularly Jamaica’s Cotterell and Trinidad & Tobago’s Emrit — looked menacing on a Sabina surface that offered a bit of uneven bounce. The spinners also benefited from plenty of turn and bounce.

More will be at stake for this do-or-die clash.

Jamaica head coach Junior Bennett is sure of his team’s ability to rise to the occasion.

“We are pretty confident that we can go out there and give a good account of ourselves. It’s a semi-final game so we are playing for the right to play in the final. We are looking to play good, consistent cricket throughout this match,” he said.

Trinidad’s captain Denesh Ramdin accepted that his opponents will pose a daunting challenge, but he told the Jamaica Observer that the bulk of the pressure would be on the home team.

“It is very important for both teams… from our perspective we haven’t been doing well in the four-day tournament. This is a chance for us to redeem ourselves, but it is not going to be easy,” he said.

The respective bowling units have covered marked deficiencies in both teams’ wobbly batting line-ups. Jamaica have not passed the 300 mark all season and none of their batsmen has made a century in the four-day competition.

Wicketkeeper Carlton Baugh has made the highest individual score of 99.

Bennett is optimistic the batting will improve.

“We had some grey areas throughout the tournament in terms of our batting but there are positive signs. It’s a disappointment we haven’t scored 300. The quality of some of the pitches contributed towards it, but for the most part the batsmen have to take responsibility for that… we have showed signs of getting there,” he said.

The Windward Islands and Barbados, who ended second and third, respectively, clash in the other semi-final at Windsor Park in Roseau, Dominica today.