ARNOS VALE, St. Vin­cent – The Bar­ba­dos Women’s team opened their Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Twen­ty20 Blaze cam­paign with a hard-fought, tense three-wick­et vic­to­ry over Trinidad & To­ba­go at the Arnos Vale Play­ing Field on Tues­day night, chas­ing down a mod­est tar­get with nine balls to spare.

Win­ning the toss and opt­ing to field first, the Pride’s bowlers ap­plied im­me­di­ate pres­sure, re­strict­ing Trinidad & To­ba­go to a be­low-par 97 for 5 from their full 20 overs.

The low scores seem to be the trend, at least in the open­ing round, as on­ly the Lee­ward Is­lands team was able to get past the 100-run mark in the sec­ond match of the triple head­er.

The in­nings nev­er found mo­men­tum, with on­ly vet­er­an bat­ter Brit­ney Coop­er pro­vid­ing sta­bil­i­ty with an un­beat­en 33 from 38 de­liv­er­ies.

She found brief sup­port from Kar­ish­ma Ramharack, who un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly opened the in­nings and scored a brisk 21, with two fours.

How­ev­er, the bat­ting unit strug­gled to build part­ner­ships against a dis­ci­plined Bar­ba­dos at­tack, led by off-spin­ner Nai­jan­ni Cum­ber­batch, who was the pick of the bowlers, claim­ing 2 for 18.

In re­ply, Bar­ba­dos seemed to be cruis­ing at 45 with­out loss, thanks to a brisk start from open­ers Eboni Brath­waite, who weighed in with 26, and Tr­is­han Hold­er, who con­tributed 16.

The chase, how­ev­er, dra­mat­i­cal­ly un­rav­elled in the mid­dle overs. Leg-spin­ner Bri­an­na Har­richa­ran or­ches­trat­ed a stun­ning col­lapse, tak­ing a re­mark­able 3 for 8 in her four overs.

Her in­ter­ven­tion trig­gered a slide that saw Bar­ba­dos lose sev­en wick­ets for just 49 runs, stum­bling from 45-0 to a pre­car­i­ous 94-7.

With nerves frayed, it fell to ex­pe­ri­enced Shamil­ia Con­nell, who stood tall with a de­fi­ant 16 not out, to an­chor the fi­nal stages.

Dis­play­ing cool-head­ed de­ter­mi­na­tion, she guid­ed her team across the line at 99-7 in the 19th over, se­cur­ing a vi­tal first win for Bar­ba­dos in the com­pe­ti­tion.

CMC

Sum­marised scores

TRINIDAD AND TO­BA­GO WOMEN 97-5 in 20 overs (Brit­ney Coop­er 33, Kar­ish­ma Ramharack 21; Nai­jan­ni Cum­ber­batch 2-18) vs BAR­BA­DOS WOMEN 99-7 in 18.3 overs (Eboni Brath­waite 26, Tr­is­han Hold­er 16, Shamelia Con­nell 16 not out; Bri­an­na Har­richa­ran 3-8). Bar­ba­dos won by three wick­ets.