Vin­ode Mam­chan

He would have spent many long hours study­ing an­gles and pro­jec­tions as an en­gi­neer­ing stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and yes­ter­day Kavesh Kan­tas­ingh put that to good use, as he starred with the ball in his de­but for T&T against Ja­maica in their 5th round Re­gion­al First Class clash at the Queen's Park Oval. The wily left arm spin­ner grabbed 6/80 to lead the fight for the home team but at the end of the day Carl­ton Baugh had led a great fight­back, scor­ing an un­beat­en cen­tu­ry as Ja­maica end­ed on 242 for nine. Kan­tas­ingh's ex­ploits with the ball left Ja­maica hob­bling on 84 for six but wick­et­keep­er Baugh and Niki­ta Miller fea­tured in a 93-run sev­enth wick­et stand to be­gin a great fight­back. Baugh mar­shalled the tailen­ders to add 158 runs for the next three wick­ets. When it was called at 5.50 pm he walked off un­beat­en on 101. He bat­tled for 193 min­utes faced 154 balls and struck nine fours and a six. Heavy overnight and ear­ly morn­ing rain had af­fect­ed the start of the match and when the heav­ens fi­nal­ly ceased op­er­a­tions at 11.30am, sog­gy greens were re­placed with men look­ing re­splen­dent in white.

Ja­maica called cor­rect­ly at the toss and they de­cid­ed to take first strike and wick­ets fell at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals. Kan­tas­ingh who has cap­tured over 100 re­gion­al First Class wick­ets for the Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) was in­tro­duced in­to the at­tack in the eighth over by T&T skip­per Rayad Em­rit. Af­ter tak­ing four balls to find his range, he land­ed his fifth of­fer­ing in the right spot and Bren­ton Parch­ment was walk­ing back to the pavil­ion for six. Lunch was then tak­en with the score at 25 for one. T&T re­turned af­ter lunch look­ing fo­cussed and the good work con­tin­ued. Em­rit led by ex­am­ple by bowl­ing Dono­van Pagon for four and soon af­ter Kan­tas­ingh sent back the in­form Bren­dan Nash for one to leave the vis­i­tors wob­bly on 26 for three. Tas­mar Lam­bert, a thorn in many T&T sides in the past was in next and af­ter tak­ing the score past 50, he fell via the leg be­fore route to Kan­tas­ingh for 12. All the while open­er Dan­za Hy­att was play­ing his usu­al ag­gres­sive-type crick­et. He was forth­right in his stroke­play and looked good, while wick­ets fell on the oth­er side.

He post­ed a half cen­tu­ry in 122 min­utes off 80 balls with three fours and three six­es, when he played pac­er Shan­non Gabriel in­to the hands of Justin Guillen at gul­ly. His fi­nal con­tri­bu­tion was 53 and when David Bernard fol­lowed him, the Ja­maicans were 84 for six. T&T had the chance to fin­ish off the in­nings but Baugh and Miller had oth­er ideas. Ini­tial­ly hit­ting their way out of trou­ble, the duo set­tled in nice­ly and Baugh played some hand­some strokes main­ly through the cov­ers to soothe the eyes af­ter some ug­ly bat­ting that went be­fore. The diminu­tive right han­der got to 50 off 76 balls with five fours. The frus­tra­tion grew for the T&T play­ers, as they let off three catch­es dur­ing this part­ner­ship. Em­rit tried a num­ber of dif­fer­ent bowl­ing op­tions to dis­man­tle the part­ner­ship but it did not work. Play gets un­der­way at 9.30 am to­day to make up for the lost time yes­ter­day.

SCORE­BOARD

TT vs Ja­maica

Ja­maica inns

D Hy­att c Guillen b Gabriel 53

B Parch­ment c Coop­er b Kan­tas­ingh 6

D Pagon b Em­rit 4

B Nash lbw Nash 1

T Lam­bert lbw Kan­tas­ingh 12

D Bernard st G Mo­hammed b Kan­tas­ingh 4

C Baugh not out 101

N Miller lbw Kan­tas­ingh 39

A Richard­son c G Mo­hammed b Kan­tas­ingh 9

O Brown c S Gan­ga b Khan 4

S Cot­terell not out 7

Ex­tras b2 2

To­tal for 9 wk­ts 242

Fall of wk­ts: 20, 25, 26, 80, 84, 84, 177, 207, 214.

Bowl­ing: S Gabriel 12–0–44–1, R Em­rit 12–4–32–1, K Kan­tas­ingh 26–5–80–6, I Khan 14–2–41–1, A Kan­hai 3.3–1–10–0, S Gan­ga 3–0–19–0, K Coop­er 4–0–14–0.