Queen's Park Crick­et Club kept their dreams alive of a unique tre­ble vic­to­ry this sea­son when they head­ed a list of im­pres­sive quar­ter­fi­nal­ists in the T&T Crick­et Board's Pre­mier­ship T20 Crick­et Fes­ti­val 2011 at Guaracara Park in Pointe-a-Pierre. The Parkites, who topped Group A, are al­ready crowned Sun­day League 50-Overs cham­pi­ons and ECU Na­tion­al League win­ners. They will clash with WC Wan­der­ers, run­ners-up in Group C, in the first match of the quar­ter­fi­nals to­day. Al­so in the knock­out round of eight are the sur­prise team of the tour­na­ment SIS Cen­tral Sports, who emerged win­ners of Group C. They play Cli­co Preysal, run­ners-up in Group A, in the sec­ond match of tonight's dou­ble-head­er.

Pow­er­Gen Sports is one of three south Trinidad teams in to­mor­row's dou­ble-head­er and will face T&TEC in an­oth­er Pe­nal der­by, which is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate great in­ter­est. In the oth­er quar­ter­fi­nal for a place in the semis, 2011 Cham­pi­onship win­ners UTT will play FC Clarke Road. The T&TCB-or­gan­ised tour­na­ment has so far been marked by ex­cit­ing crick­et and sev­er­al close fin­ish­es with the top score so far es­tab­lished by Nicholas Sookdeosingh, who hit 77 for Pow­er­Gen in their first round vic­to­ry against Aranguez, a re­cent­ly pro­mot­ed cham­pi­onship side play­ing in the Pre­mier League next sea­son. Pow­er­Gen al­so boasts most pro­duc­tive bowler, Va­roon Sama­roo, who has snared six wick­ets in two match­es with his off breaks.

The Pre­mier­ship T20 of­fers the biggest prize mon­ey ever in a tour­na­ment of this type with $150,000 go­ing to the win­ner and $80,000 for the run­ners-up, in­clud­ing tro­phies and medals. The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) along with First Cit­i­zens are among the pri­ma­ry spon­sors of the T20 with Am­s­tel Beer and Gatorade con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to make the com­pe­ti­tion a great suc­cess. The TTCB have pro­vid­ed crick­et fans with a large re­play screen at the east­ern end of the ground and for the first time in lo­cal his­to­ry, an en­tire tour­na­ment was broad­cast live by WI Sports on ca­ble TV.

The third-placed team in the T20 will pock­et $50,000, while $30,000 will go to the team fin­ish­ing in fourth po­si­tion. The los­ing quar­ter­fi­nal­ists get $40,000 each, while all win­ners in the pre­lim­i­nary round earn $2,000. The los­ing sides col­lect­ed $1,000 each for com­plet­ing their pro­gramme. Every night of the tour­na­ment, the win­ning and los­ing team col­lect­ed $2,000 and $1,000, re­spec­tive­ly, cour­tesy NGC and the NL­CB while the Man of the Match prizes of $500 were spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens.

Fix­tures

Pre­mier­ship T20 Crick­et Fes­ti­val Semi­fi­nals

To­day: Queen's Park vs WC Wan­der­ers; 3 pm,

SIS Cen­tral Sports vs Preysal; 7 pm

To­mor­row: Pow­er­Gen vs T&TEC; 3 pm,

UTT vs First Cit­i­zens Clarke Road; 7 pm