Vin­ode Mam­chan

An in­dif­fer­ent per­for­mance by the Red Force led to the dis­ap­point­ment of thou­sands of fans at the Queen's Park Oval on Sun­day, as they went down to Bar­ba­dos by 28 runs in their first match of the Nagi­co Re­gion­al Su­per50 tour­na­ment.

Scores: Bar­ba­dos 269/8 (45 overs) vs T&T 241 all out (48.2 overs)

A slop­py bowl­ing ef­fort en­abled the vis­i­tors to tal­ly an im­pres­sive 269 for eight off 45 overs, the lo­cals found the go­ing tough with the bat, as they were un­able to forge mean­ing­ful part­ner­ships to chal­lenge the tar­get. Lendl Sim­mons with 37 and Dar­ren Bra­vo with an at­trac­tive 40 had the good crowd on hand look­ing for­ward to some­thing spe­cial but it was not to be.

Dar­ren Bra­vo fell to an in­ju­di­cious pull shot for 40 af­ter slam­ming Sul­lie­man Benn for six. The tall, left arm or­tho­dox spin­ner would end as the top bowler with 4/39.

With wick­ets falling at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals, the run rate kept climb­ing and al­though De­nesh Ramdin stroked 48 not out, the lo­cals fell short. Pac­er Ja­son Hold­er claimed 3/28 to en­sure the Ba­jans record their win.

Ear­li­er, Bar­ba­dos won the toss and de­cid­ed to have first use of a good bat­ting strip. With rain af­fect­ing the start, the ini­tial 45 min­utes lost did not af­fect the num­ber of overs. How­ev­er, af­ter the toss, rain came again and with the game fi­nal­ly get­ting off at 3.45 pm–it was re­duced to 45 overs a side.

The Bar­ba­di­ans re­ceived a blow be­fore the start as Kirk Ed­wards, one of their top bats­men, was sent home for rea­sons oth­er than in­jury. The Ba­jans would not be able to re­place him be­cause of the na­ture of the sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing his re­turn to Bar­ba­dos.

Dwayne Smith, a vast­ly im­proved crick­eter since join­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al T20 car­a­van, lift­ed the spir­its of his coun­try­men ear­li­er on and Jonathan Carter would end bril­liant­ly.

Smith lost fel­low open­er Kraigg Brath­waite to a beau­ty from Dwayne Bra­vo but took con­trol to struc­ture the in­nings.

T&T skip­per, Bra­vo, give the very good crowd on hand their first cheer when he spread-ea­gled Brath­waite's stumps with the score on 26.

Smith found a good al­ly in Rashi­di Bouch­er and they took the score past the 50-run mark. The right hand­ed Smith played a num­ber of pow­er­ful shots all around the park, which won the ap­proval of even the home fans.

Bouch­er, who played do­mes­tic crick­et in Trinidad, was nev­er known to be a great play­er of spin bowl­ing and with this knowl­edge Bra­vo brought in leg-spin­ner Im­ran Khan, who struck first ball. Bouch­er, on 13, played for­ward to a goo­gly and was on his way.

Smith brought up his half cen­tu­ry off 39 balls with eight fours and two six­es and Carter fol­lowed suit with his off 67 balls with six fours and a six.

The pair added 103 runs for the third wick­et be­fore Rayad Em­rit, with a dou­ble strike, brought T&T right back in­to the game. He sent back Smith for 83 scored off 72 balls with and then ac­count­ed for skip­per Kevin Stoute for a 'duck.'

Carter and the plucky Shane Dowrich com­bined for a won­der­ful part­ner­ship of 91 runs as the Bar­ba­di­ans con­tin­ued to count the runs.

Carter brought up his sec­ond re­gion­al lim­it­ed overs cen­tu­ry in the process off 106 balls with sev­en fours and five six­es. He con­tin­ued his im­pres­sive run against T&T as he got 61 against them last sea­son.

Coop­er fi­nal­ly got Carter for 109 and Dowrich 35 made as the Ba­jans closed on a healthy 269 for eight. Em­rit end­ed with 4/50 off his nine overs.

SCORE­BOARD

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T&T vs Bar­ba­dos

Bar­ba­dos inns

D Smith c DA Bra­vo b Em­rit 83

K Brath­waite b Bra­vo 2

R Bouch­er lbw Khan 13

J Carter b Coop­er 109

K Stoute b Em­rit 0

S Dowrich c J Mo­hammed b Ram­paul 35

C Brath­waite not out 9

A Nurse c Ram­paul b Em­rit 4

J Hold­er c Ram­paul b Em­rit 0

Ex­tras 14

To­tal for 8 wk­ts (45ovs) 269

Fall of wk­ts: 26, 57, 160, 160, 251, 260, 268, 269.

Bowl­ing: R Ram­paul 9-0-65-1, D Bra­vo 8-0-31-1, I Khan 4-1-22-1, K Coop­er 9-0-55-1, R Em­rit 9-0-50-4, L Sim­mons 6-0-39-0.

T&T inns

Adri­an Barath c R Bouch­er b J Hold­er 10

Evin Lewis c S Dowrich b J Hold­er 13

Lendl Sim­mons b S Benn 37

Dar­ren Bra­vo b S Benn 40

Dwayne Bra­vo lbw b S Benn 16

Ja­son Mo­hammed c R Bouch­er b J Hold­er 32

Ravi Ram­paul b S Benn 3

De­nesh Ramdin+ not out 48

Kevon Coop­er b C Brath­waite 2

Im­ran khan b D Smith 7

Rayad Em­rit run out (D Smith) 6

Ex­tras 0b 7lb 17w 3nb 0pen 27

To­tal all out 241 all out

Bowl­ing: Fi­del Ed­wards 6-0-42-0, Ja­son Hold­er 8-1-29-3, Car­los Brath­waite 7-0-35-1, Kevin Stoute 4-0-29-0, Sulie­man Benn 9-1-39-4, Ash­ley Nurse 7-0-46-0, Dwayne Smith 2.3-0-14-1.

Re­sult: Bar­ba­dos won by 28 runs.