Vin­ode Mam­chan

W-Con­nec­tion Wan­der­ers crashed out the do­mes­tic T20 crick­et se­ries on Fri­day night, af­ter they record­ed their sec­ond suc­ces­sive loss in the tour­na­ment at Guaracara Park in Pointe-a-Pierre. Gus Lo­gie's men were out­classed for the sec­ond night run­ning, this time by FC Clarke Road, as they fell to an eight-wick­et de­feat. It means that they are out of the tour­na­ment, while Clarke Road and Lumar Es­mer­al­da are in­to the quar­ter-fi­nals. When both teams meet in their fi­nal group match, it will be to de­ter­mine the group win­ners. Wan­der­ers bat­ting again let them down as they fol­lowed the 107 against Es­mer­al­da with 108 for nine against Clarke Road. The Pe­nal boys, then got an easy win, as open­ers Nicholas Alex­is and Ahmed Mo­hammed post­ed a 60-run open­ing as­so­ci­a­tion that laid the foun­da­tion for their even­tu­al 111 for two in 15.2 overs. With the venue lack­ing the nor­mal fes­tive at­mos­phere, due to the lack of fans at the park, Mo­hammed de­cid­ed to re­turn home ear­ly and Clarke Road got home with 28 balls to spare. He went hard at the bowl­ing got his 39 from just 23 balls with five fours and two six­es.

While he was do­ing his thing, Alex­is was play­ing the sup­port­ing role and when Mo­hammed left, the right-han­der took over to carve out a con­trolled 43 off 49 balls with three fours. Ja­maican im­port Dan­za Hy­att failed to spark but this did not af­fect the Clarke Road team, as Sean Siloch came in and scored an un­beat­en 17 off 19 balls to en­sure no hic­cups. Mo­hammed who was named man of the match, said he was very hap­py to be play­ing with Clarke Road for the first time and want­ed to make a big im­pres­sion. "I want­ed to do well first up for Clarke Road and I am hap­py that things went well. The ball was find­ing the mid­dle of the bat and I en­joyed the in­nings." Ear­li­er, Wan­der­ers fell away bad­ly af­ter an open­ing stand of 56 be­tween Mark Deyal the son of for­mer Wan­der­ers and T&T play­er De­onar­ine Deyal and Deems Baird. The two bat­tled well and post­ed 56 in 9.1 overs but the fall of both men in quick suc­ces­sion, one to a run out and an­oth­er bowled by De­nesh Ramd­har­ry led to a col­lapse and the runs dried up. Baird made 36 off 27 balls with three fours, Deyal count­ed 18 off 31 balls with one four. Apart from the open­ers, on­ly Ray Camp­bell got in­to dou­ble fig­ures with 11. Ramd­har­ry end­ed with 2/19, while Clarke Road cap­tain San­jiv Gool­jar took 2/20.

SCORES

W-Con­nec­tion Wan­der­ers 108/9 (20)(Deems Baird 36, Mark Deyal 18, De­nesh Ramd­har­ry 2/19, San­jiv Gool­jar 2/20) vs FC Clarke Road 111/2 (15.2)(Nicholas Alex­is 43no, Ahmed Mo­hammed 39, Sean Siloch 17no, Dar­ius Be­sai 1/27) – Clarke Road won by eight wick­ets. Man-of-match: Ahmed Mo­hammed.