Naz Ya­coob

T&T youth crick­eters re­bound­ed from their dis­ap­point­ing loss to Ja­maica in the TCL Group West In­dies U-19 Chal­lenge in the open­ing round of the lim­it­ed overs se­ries, with a con­vinc­ing vic­to­ry over Bar­ba­dos in Round Two yes­ter­day at Kens­ing­ton Crick­et Ground. Chas­ing Bar­ba­dos' mod­est to­tal of 176 made in 45 overs, T&T cruised to their vic­to­ry tar­get in 43.1 overs, los­ing three wick­ets in the process to stay alive in the com­pe­ti­tion. Yan­nic Cari­ah end­ed un­beat­en on 29 and skip­per Yan­nick Ot­t­ley was 21 not out. T&T shrugged off the loss in the three-day league tour­na­ment and played like true cham­pi­ons as they dom­i­nat­ed this short­er ver­sion of the game in all de­part­ments. Lead­ing the vic­to­ry charge for T&T were the ex­cit­ing Evin Lewis (47) and promis­ing Nicholas Alex­is (43), who both con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the bat.

The left-hand­ed Lewis faced 82 balls and struck four fours and two six­es, while Alex­is in­nings was com­piled off 77 balls and con­tained five fours. Cari­ah copped the Play­er of the Match award. T&T had ear­li­er won the toss and in­sert­ed Bar­ba­dos. T&T made one change to the team which was beat­en by Ja­maica in the open­ing round on Thurs­day at Up-Camp Park. Alex­is made a full re­cov­ery from an eye in­jury and re­placed the out-of-form Marc Panchu. Bar­ba­dos, who was beat­en in last year's fi­nal, opened with the im­pres­sive Kraigg Brath­waite and An­tho­ny Al­leyne. The move by Ot­t­ley paid rich div­i­dends very ear­ly in the in­nings with the dis­missals of Al­leyne (15) and Ros­ton Chase (0) with on­ly 23 runs on the board. Big-hit­ter Al­leyne was bowled by Sachin Boodram with the to­tal on 20 and three runs lat­er, Chase had his wood­work shat­tered by Teshawn Cas­tro.

Brath­waite (21) re­vived the in­nings with a third-wick­et stand of 37 with Kyle My­ers (27) be­fore they were sep­a­rat­ed when the for­mer was well caught in the deep by Akiel Coop­er in Kissoon­dath Ma­gram's first over. Bar­ba­dos slipped fur­ther in trou­ble when My­ers was bowled by prob­ing off-spin­ner Amir Khan, send­ing the Ba­jans on the ropes, 75 for four. Wick­ets con­tin­ued to tum­ble at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals against the prob­ing pace and spin at­tack em­ployed by Ot­t­ley. It was left to Bar­ba­dos' skip­per Ja­son Hold­er with a quick­fire in­nings of 34 off 39 balls in 51 min­utes with three fours and two six­es, to bring about some re­spectabil­i­ty to his team's to­tal. Hold­er was dis­missed try­ing to force the pace. He was caught by Lewis off Boodram. The in­nings there­after fold­ed. There were two wick­ets apiece for left-arm spin­ner Javed Boodram (2-2), Cari­ah (2-15) and Sachin Boodram (2-39). T&T will take on the Lee­ward Is­lands in a Round Three fix­ture to­day at Kens­ing­ton Ground.