Naz Ya­coob

Left-hand­ed open­ing bats­man Justin Guillen stroked an el­e­gant half-cen­tu­ry, for de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons North, but at the din­ner break the home team was stum­bling on 157 for five, in the an­nu­al Ger­ry Gomez North/South Crick­et Clas­sic, yes­ter­day at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. At the in­ter­val Kevon Coop­er was un­beat­en on 20 and skip­per Rayad Em­rit nine. Spin­ners Amit Jag­ger­nauth three for 24 and Dave Mo­hammed two for 39 are the wick­et­tak­ers for the South­ern­ers. On­ly a hand­ful of spec­ta­tors were on hand to wit­ness Guillen's mas­ter­ly in­nings on open­ing day's play of the four-day con­test. The well-or­gan­ised Guillen made 73 be­fore he was caught at cov­er by Ja­son Mo­hammed off the bowl­ing of left-am spin­ner Dave Mo­hammed with the to­tal on 121. Guillen's in­nings spanned 105 min­utes and 75 balls and in­clud­ed 11 fours and two six­es.

He shared in an en­ter­pris­ing open­ing part­ner­ship of 99 with Mario Bel­con who con­tributed a well-fash­ioned 41, laced with six fours off 60 balls in 85 min­utes. Ear­li­er, de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons North un­der the guid­ance of all­rounder Em­rit won the toss and opt­ed for first strike.

Seek­ing a beaver-trick, North left-out youth play­ers–Aaron Al­fred, Rishaad Har­ris and Mar­lon Bar­clay from their fi­nal line-up. South with Na­tion­al skip­per Daren Gan­ga at the helm and seek­ing to snap the win­ning streak of the op­po­si­tion, omit­ted Gibran Mo­hammed, Ravi Ram­paul, Mag­num Nanan and At­i­ba Alert from their 15-man-squad. Guillen and Bel­con gave the cham­pi­ons a fly­ing start­ing post­ing 50 for the open­ing part­ner­ship in 45 min­utes and 65 balls which in­clud­ed eight fours and a six. Guillen who has im­pressed all and sundry in the tri­al match­es looked in good touch through­out his in­nings and was par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere on Sher­win Gan­ga, clout­ing the part-time off-spin­ner for two well ex­e­cut­ed fours in his open­ing over.

RIGHT: Justin Guillen, sec­ond from left, back row, takes in the ac­tion af­ter scor­ing 73 at the top of the in­nings for North.

The Queen's Park cap­tain al­so loft­ed spin­ner Samuel Badree for a six in front of the Bri­an Lara Pavil­lion. He reached his 50 with a bound­ary through mid-wick­et of Gan­ga (S). The land­mark came in 74 min­utes off 49 de­liv­er­ies and was gar­nished with nine fours and a six. The stand was bro­ken with the score on 99, when Bel­con was trapped in front to off-spin­ner Jag­ger­nauth. From the rel­a­tive­ly sound po­si­tion of 99 for one, North slipped to 131 for five with the spin twins–Jag­ger­nauth and Mo­hammed mak­ing se­ri­ous in­roads in the op­po­si­tion's top and low­er-or­der bat­ting. Daron Cruik­shank (7), Lendl Sim­mons (5) and Richard Kel­ly (0) all be­ing dis­missed with poor shot se­lec­tions. And his­to­ry was cre­at­ed when for the first time since the in­cep­tion of the four-day af­fair, that the con­test is be­ing played as a day/night match. It is al­so the last game for play­ers to stake a claim for places on the na­tion­al team for the 2010 Re­gion­al First-Class sea­son.