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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Bravo for Red Steel

by

20140726

Rons­ford Beat­on shuf­fled at the top of his run and steamed in from the Pavil­ion End. Fast for­ward a few sec­onds and Dar­ren Bra­vo pos­es for the cam­era, as he just struck the last ball of the match for six to give his team, T&T Red Steel, a four-wick­et vic­to­ry in their Li­ma­col Caribbean Pre­mier League T20 clash at the Queen's Park Oval on Thurs­day night against the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors.In front of a ca­pac­i­ty crowd at the Oval, the match went down to the last over with Red Steel need­ing nine runs to win. Beat­on held his nerve nice­ly as he took it down to the last ball and with six runs need­ed the Ama­zon War­riors were favourites.

With the crowd chant­i­ng Bra­vo! Bra­vo! Bra­vo!, Beat­on bowled a length ball on off-stump and Bra­vo nailed it over deep mid-wick­et and as it head­ed for the Caribbean Sea, his red-clad team­mates were rush­ing in to hoist their hero high.Chas­ing 180 runs for vic­to­ry off 20 overs, af­ter War­riors cap­tain De­nesh Ramdin played a su­perb hand of 84, the Red Steel looked to­tal­ly out of it at 13 for three when Dwayne Bra­vo joined his half broth­er Dar­ren in the mid­dle.With the run rate around three runs per over and the re­quired rate head­ing to 11, they hard­ly had time to set­tle and start­ed to at­tack with great suc­cess. Pret­ty soon the fans were be­liev­ing again and the par­ty fi­nal­ly got start­ed. Dwayne was more ag­gres­sive and had the War­riors chas­ing leather much to the de­light of the crowd.

The right/left com­bi­na­tion post­ed a crit­i­cal 131 runs off just 12.5 overs to change the com­plex­ion of the game. Dwayne was the first to go, scor­ing 67 off 42 balls with six fours and three six­es. Nico­las Pooran joined Dar­ren and played a nine-ball cameo of 16 which fur­ther ad­vanced the cause.How­ev­er, the night be­longed to Dar­ren who smashed his sec­ond half cen­tu­ry of the tour­na­ment, fin­ish­ing on 69 not out off 49 balls with five fours and five six­es–which won him the play­er of the match award.Ear­li­er, the open­ing bowlers Samuel Badree and Fi­del Ed­wards start­ed off the at­tack bowl­ing with great dis­ci­pline. Badree sent back the dan­ger­ous Mar­tin Gup­till and this pushed the War­riors back very ear­ly.Ed­wards was rush­ing in from the North­ern End and even test­ed the qual­i­ty of Mo­ham­mad Hafeeez's hel­met.

The two bowled well in tan­dem and the first bound­ary came af­ter 25 de­liv­er­ies. Sim­mons played an im­pe­ri­ous cov­er dri­ve for four and this opened the flood­gates as three more bound­aries would come in the same over–which tal­lied 16 in all.Badree would then re­turn in the next over to bring back or­der. He sent back Hafeez, who failed to deal with a full toss and Kevin O'Brien held a fine run­ning catch, div­ing for­ward and in the same over Sim­mons turned back to see the blink­ers–as he was stumped for 24. He faced 21 balls and struck five fours in an in­nings that promised much more.War­riors skip­per Ramdin then came in and took to­tal con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion. The West In­dies Test cap­tain was in great touch and took the pres­sure of Nee­sham who was strug­gling on the slug­gish pitch.

The pint-sized Ramdin played some very at­trac­tive shots that won the ap­proval of the fans in red, who has turned out to sup­port Bra­vo's men. The La Ro­maine man was in top gear and brought up his half cen­tu­ry off 33 balls with three fours and three six­es.Soon af­ter he passed his T20 best of 55 not out, as he mo­tored on in front of a hap­less Red Steel at­tack.With great knowl­edge of the con­di­tions at the Oval, Ramdin played an un­be­liev­able hand and plas­tered the bowl­ing to all parts of the ground. He and Nee­sham took the score to 149 when he fi­nal­ly ran out of steam and fell to a short one from Ed­wards. his 84 came off on­ly 45 balls and in­clud­ed half a dozen fours and half a dozen six­es. The part­ner­ship with Nee­sham was worth 122 runs off just 12 overs.

Chris Barn­well then en­tered and the sto­ry was the same, he smacked 23 off eight balls with two six­es and a four and to­geth­er with Nee­sham was able to take 21 runs from the last over bowled by Bra­vo. Nee­sham fin­ished 33 not out off 32 balls with one four and a six.With the win, Red Steel now moves on to six points and will play Ja­maica Tallawahs at noon to­day at the Oval.

Red Steel vs Ama­zon War­riors

War­riors inns

L Sim­mons st Pooran b Badrees 24

M Gup­till c DJ Bra­vo b Badree 1

M Hafeez c O'Brien b Badree 1

D Ramdin c Badree b Ed­wards 84

J Nee­sham not out 32

C Barn­well run out 23

V Per­maul not out 13

Ex­tras (lb5, w8) 13

To­tal: 5 wk­ts (20ovs) 179

Fall of wk­ts: 3, 23, 27, 149, 175.

Bowl­ing: F Ed­wards 4-0-38-1 (1w), S Badree 4-0-13-3 (1w), S Benn 3-0-23-0, D Bra­vo 4-0-54-0 (1w), K Coop­er 4-0-32-0 (1w), K O'Brien 1-0-14-0.

Red Steel inns

K Lewis c Barn­well b Hafeez 3

K O'Brien b San­tok­ie 4

R Tay­lor lbw Per­maul 0

DM Bra­vo not out 69

DJ Bra­vo c Barn­well b Nee­sham 67

N Pooran c Sim­mons b San­tok­ie 16

K Coop­er c Barn­well b San­tok­ie 2

J Mo­hammed not out 1

Ex­tras lb3, w15 18

To­tal: 6 wk­ts (20ovs) 180

Fall of wk­ts: 5, 6, 13, 144, 167, 171.

Bowl­ing: K San­tok­ie 4-0-36-3 (2w), V Per­maul 3-0-17-1 (1w), M Hafeez 4-1-23-1, S Ja­cobs 2-0-28-0 (1w), R Beat­on 4-0-39-0 (3w), J Nee­sham 3-0-34-1.

Re­sult: T&T Red Steel won by 4 wk­ts.

Man of the match: Dar­ren Bra­vo.

LEAGUE TA­BLE

POS TEAM MAT WON LOST TIED N/R PTS NET RR

1 Ja­maica Tallawahs 3 3 0 0 0 6 +0.924

2 T&T Red Steel 4 3 1 0 0 6 +0.551

3 Guyana Ama­zon War­riors 5 3 2 0 0 6 +0.329

4 Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents 3 2 1 0 0 4 +0.245

5 An­tigua Hawks­bills 4 0 4 0 0 0 -1.034

6 St Lu­cia Zouks 3 0 3 0 0 0 -1.223


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