There were lots of positives to come out of the Belco Cup and yet the issues that have plagued our game for the past several years were there for all to see once more.

In fact, as I sat and watched the semi-final at St David’s on Saturday and the final on the Sunday, I realised that I was seeing the reasons for our continued failure on the international stage being played out before my eyes.

Quite simply, as a nation, our batting lets us down.

Sure, we can score runs, we can hit boundaries on our tiny grounds, but when it comes to picking up singles and rotating the strike, we struggle.

Southampton Rangers were worthy winners, and should be congratulated on their achievement, but even they are not immune to this disease as their performance in the semi-final against Bailey’s Bay showed.

Against a reasonable Bay bowling attack, after 30 overs or 180 balls, Rangers had scored 110 runs. Not so bad, you might think, except, alarmingly, 122 of those deliveries were dot balls, meaning they scored their runs from just 58 balls.

It gets worse. After 26 overs Rangers had scored only 26 singles. Bermuda, the statistics do not lie, but they do highlight a problem in our game and show its strengths and weaknesses, with both bat and ball.

In Southampton Rangers’ defence what they did do well was bat the overs out. At one stage it looked as if they would be bowled out in 40 overs, but their tailenders were very disciplined and in the end, this proved beneficial, as they received an extra 36 penalty runs due to Bailey’s Bay’s slow over rate.

Their final total of 217 showed what happens when a batsman in Bermuda cricket gets tied down and finds runs hard to come by, he simply waits for the bad ball, which he knows will come, and relieves the pressure that way.

Most batsmen in Bermuda know that playing local cricket they are bound to get one, two or sometimes three bad balls an over, so they wait. However, what happens when that bad ball doesn’t come — that’s when the dot balls pile up.

I only highlight Rangers because I was a witness to this performance, but it doesn’t stop on the local front.

Our batsmen carry these habits overseas on the international stage too. Recently Bermuda toured Indianapolis and probably averaged around 50 per cent dot balls per game in a Twenty20 match.

This means that out of 120 possible balls that are available to score off, we were only scoring from 60 deliveries. These figures will inevitably lead to failure internationally, and we need to find a way to counteract the fault.

The problem of dot balls though comes primarily from our player’s inability to bat against spin bowling.

Most of our batsmen are afraid to come down the track to the spinners. There are so many options available that one can use when batting against spin.

As the Board’s head of coaching the next time we meet with the coaches, this will be a matter for discussion, as it needs to be addressed Island wide. We have to teach our players to have more confidence when batting against spin.

The higher the level of cricket, the fewer the bad balls there will be in an innings. Consequently, it is imperative that our batsman learn how to score off a bowler’s “good deliveries.”

The team in Indianapolis was fortunate to have video analysis footage where we were able to highlight to the players how other teams were rotating the strike off deliveries that we were blocking. This opened the player’s eyes, but now we need to improve our batsmen’s skill levels in this regard.

Even the basics, such as running between the wickets, need to be improved, it is a skill that is sorely lacking in our game at this time.

Our coaches in Bermuda must take up this challenge if we are to see an improvement in our cricket locally and internationally. This is one major aspect of the game that needs improvement, and the time to start correcting this problem is now.