Vin­ode Mam­chan

Jonathan who? Well it was Jonathan Foo, a bats­man of Chi­nese de­scent who played the in­nings of his life to give Guyana the re­gion­al T20 crick­et ti­tle over Bar­ba­dos at the Queen's Park Oval on Sat­ur­day night. The right-hand­ed bats­man scored 42 not out off just 17 balls to take Guyana to vic­to­ry and a place in the Air­tel Cham­pi­ons League in South Africa in Sep­tem­ber. Scores: Bar­ba­dos 134/5 (20 overs) vs Guyana 135/9 (19.5). A to­tal of 37 runs were scored off the fi­nal three overs and Foo sin­gle-hand­ed­ly turned the ta­bles on Bar­ba­dos.

Be­fore him, a be­low par to­tal from Bar­ba­dos looked pret­ty com­pet­i­tive and Foo used the last two overs to show he is a cal­cu­lat­ed fin­ish­er. The man who plays for F&E Di­a­mond Unit­ed in Trinidad added an un­bro­ken 34 runs for the fi­nal wick­et with Davin­dra Bishoo to take Guyana to an amaz­ing win and their sec­ond re­gion­al T20 ti­tle. Need­ing 11 runs off the fi­nal over bowled by Jer­von Sear­les, Foo and Bishoo took it down to the fifth ball - win­ning the game on a mis-field by Sulie­man Benn.

Pri­or to their amaz­ing stand, West In­dies A play­er Ash­ley Nurse grabbed four wick­ets for 35 runs to keep the in­nings in check. How­ev­er, in the end it was a night to re­mem­ber for Guyana.

Ear­li­er, dis­ap­point­ment greet­ed Bar­ba­dos at the start with the news that Ke­mar Roach was out of the game af­ter be­ing hit on the back of his head dur­ing net prac­tice on Fri­day. He needs ten days rest to re­cu­per­ate. Bar­ba­dos fell away af­ter a promis­ing start, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Dale Richards (16 runs off 9 balls). Jonathan Carter, the bats­man of the se­ries for Bar­ba­dos joined Kirk Ed­wards and they took the score to 63 for one af­ter eight overs. How­ev­er, Ed­wards fell for 16 and al­though Carter bat­ted to the end for an un­beat­en 57, the oth­er bats­men found the go­ing tough against the Guyana bowlers and could not make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion.

Leg-spin­ner Davin­dra Bishoo was ex­cel­lent and fin­ished with two for 14 off four overs. He would be named most valu­able play­er of the tour­na­ment. Medi­um pac­er Chris Barn­well al­so bowled well and grabbed one for 19 off four overs. The left hand­ed Carter showed a great un­der­stand­ing of T20 run gath­er­ing and ro­tat­ed the strike won­der­ful­ly, in be­tween some lusty blows. He end­ed the in­nings with a mighty six to fin­ish on 57 not out off 62 balls with four fours and one six.