BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Guyana Harpy Ea­gles have opened up a sig­nif­i­cant lead at the top of the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship stand­ings, fol­low­ing the third round of match­es which wrapped up last week­end.

The Leon John­son-led unit crushed hosts Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force by 143 runs on Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal day at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, to reg­is­ter their sec­ond win of the cam­paign and climb to 49 points.

Harpy Ea­gles, one of three un­beat­en teams in the tour­na­ment, are now near­ly 12 points clear of sec­ond placed Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes on 37.8.

At the start of the third round last week, Harpy Ea­gles held a 5-½ point lead over reign­ing cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos Pride.

They pro­duced a dom­i­nant all-round dis­play to brush aside Red Force, 26-year-old rook­ie bats­man Ke­mol Sa­vory hit­ting a maid­en first class hun­dred, John­son gath­er­ing half-cen­turies in each in­nings and pac­er Rons­ford Beat­on and vet­er­an left-arm spin­ner Veerasam­my Per­maul fin­ish­ing with six-wick­et match hauls apiece.

Harpy Ea­gles will now con­clude their cam­paign at home at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, start­ing with their penul­ti­mate round game against win­less Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons be­gin­ning on Wednes­day.

Vol­ca­noes, mean­while, fourth af­ter the sec­ond round, were equal­ly dom­i­nant last week­end in pulling off a 181-run vic­to­ry over Scor­pi­ons at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, to leap in­to sec­ond spot in the stand­ings and al­so re­main un­beat­en.

They were car­ried by a fifty in each in­nings from cap­tain Al­ick Athanaze and a splen­did all-round ef­fort from Justin Greaves who cracked a half-cen­tu­ry and claimed an eight-wick­et match haul.

Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes, fifth in the stand­ings at the start of the third round af­ter draw­ing both their open­ing round games, edged Pride by two wick­ets in a tense fin­ish at Queen’s Park Oval to post their first win of the sea­son and climb in­to third spot on 34.2 points.

Pride are nar­row­ly be­hind in fourth on 31.2 while Red Force have slipped to fifth on 24.8, leav­ing win­less Scor­pi­ons bot­tom on 15.4 points.

In the re­main­ing fourth round games, Red Force take on Pride at Queen’s Park Oval while Hur­ri­canes clash with Vol­ca­noes at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um.

CMC