BRIDGETOWN – A su­perb dis­play of pow­er-hit­ting by Bar­ba­dos Pride all-rounder Roshon Primus al­most took Wan­der­ers Club to a re­mark­able vic­to­ry over tour­ing Ire­land in a one-day warm-up match here Thursday.

The strong­ly-built 24-year-old blast­ed sev­en huge six­es and sev­en fours in a scin­til­lat­ing 83 off 36 balls as the home team came up 45 runs short of their tar­get of 339 at the Dayrell’s Road ground.

Primus, a mem­ber of the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents fran­chise which won the Caribbean Pre­mier League last year, en­tered with Wan­der­ers on 165 for four in the 37th over and im­me­di­ate­ly went in­to over-dri­ve in a su­perb so­lo ef­fort.

The right-han­der raced to his half-cen­tu­ry off 25 balls with five fours and four six­es, reach­ing the land­mark with a thun­der­ous cov­er-dri­ven bound­ary off seam­er Bar­ry Mc­Carthy. While he was at the crease Wan­der­ers added 114 runs in 10 overs to threat­en the tar­get and put the Irish un­der se­vere pres­sure.

Primus, who has rep­re­sent­ed T&T in the past but is now un­der con­tract to the Pride, fi­nal­ly per­ished in the 47th over, bowled miss­ing a heave at pac­er Craig Young.

The run chase was set up by a cen­tu­ry open­ing stand be­tween Test bats­man Kraigg Brath­waite and Pride left-han­der Shayne Mose­ley. The pair, who will open for Bar­ba­dos next week in the Re­gion­al Four-day Cham­pi­onship, post­ed 109 but at a pedes­tri­an rate of just four runs per over, leav­ing the ask­ing rate close to nine runs per over.

Brath­waite made 45 off 59 balls be­fore he was stumped off off-spin­ner Si­mi Singh at­tempt­ing a big hit while Mose­ley made a cul­tured 79 off 119 with 12 bound­aries he was bowled by seam­er Boy Rankin, paving the way for Primus’s ar­rival.

Ear­li­er, Ire­land made great use of the per­fect bat­ting con­di­tions to reach 338 for five off their 50 overs, with three bats­men reach­ing half-cen­turies. Wick­et­keep­er Gary Wil­son slammed 76 off 35 balls bat­ting at num­ber eight, with 60 of his runs com­ing in bound­aries as the vis­i­tors man­aged 100 runs off the last 10 overs.

The pair of Paul Stir­ling and James Mc­Col­lom both made 64 in an open­ing stand of 133 in 20 overs be­fore re­tir­ing to al­low oth­er bats­men the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bat.

In the mid­dle overs Ire­land were stymied by off-spin­ner Ja­mar Trot­man who was im­pres­sive with fig­ures of five for 50 from his 10 overs.

Ire­land used the match as part of their prepa­ra­tions for the up­com­ing three-match One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries against West In­dies. (CMC)