Vin­ode Mam­chan

Fine per­for­mances from Adri­an Barath and Samuel Badree led T&T to a sev­en-wick­et vic­to­ry over Cana­da yes­ter­day at New King Ground in Toron­to and in the process they won the Eti­had T20 Crick­et Fes­ti­val. T&T opened the tour­na­ment with a loss against Afghanistan but re­bound­ed with a mas­sive vic­to­ry over the Unit­ed States yes­ter­day and fin­ished off with a com­pre­hen­sive sev­en-wick­et vic­to­ry the Cana­di­ans. T&T, Cana­da and Afghanistan all end­ed with four points but T&T took the ti­tle on bet­ter net run rate.

Cana­da won the toss and de­cid­ed to take first strike yes­ter­day and com­piled 111 for nine off their al­lot­ted 20 overs. There was a steady stream of bats­men to and from the dugout as leg spin­ners Samuel Badree and Im­ran Khan con­tin­ued their im­pres­sive work. The duo had bowled out the Unit­ed States the day be­fore and re­turned yes­ter­day to do like­wise to their neigh­bours.

Badree fin­ished with three wick­ets for sev­en runs from his four overs, while Khan grabbed 2/21 off his four. When T&T took to the crease, open­er Adri­an Barath, who missed the last game, was in good form and kept the scor­ers busy. He slammed the hosts bowl­ing all around the pic­turesque ground and count­ed 69 from 37 balls. In his knock were sev­en fours and three six­es. Lend­ing good sup­port was mid­dle or­der bats­man Ja­son Mo­hammed who scored a rapid 30, as T&T end­ed on 114 for three off 16 overs.

Man­ag­er of the team Omar Khan said he was hap­py with the per­for­mance of his team and they came back mag­nif­i­cent­ly af­ter the open­ing loss. "Af­ter los­ing that open­ing game to Afghanistan, the boys re­al­ly pulled up their socks and came good against the US and Cana­da. To­day was a big game with all to play for and the boys showed they want­ed to win and came out re­al­ly fo­cused." Khan said the out­ing proved a suc­cess as the team was able to get in some ac­tion in the mid­dle and work on var­i­ous as­pects of their game against good op­po­si­tion.

SCORES

Cana­da 111/9 (20)(Samuel Badree 3/7, Im­ran Khan 2/21) vs T&T 114/3 (16)(Adri­an Barath 69 no, Ja­son Mo­hammed 30) – T&T won by sev­en wk­ts.