KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent – Trinidad and To­ba­go Women bol­stered their chances of mak­ing the T20 Blaze fi­nal by dom­i­nat­ing de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Guyana Women by eight wick­ets in a cru­cial con­test Mon­day (Jan­u­ary 19).

Leg spin­ner Shriya Jairam and off spin­ner Sama­ra Ram­nath shared sev­en wick­ets be­tween them, as T&T rout­ed Guyana for a mea­gre 57 in 17 overs.

Brit­ney Coop­er and Djen­a­ba Joseph then shared a 56-run un­bro­ken part­ner­ship for the third wick­et to see T&T stroll to 58 for two in 13.2 overs.

The re­sult left fourth place Guyana need­ing to de­feat sec­ond placed Bar­ba­dos Women in their fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary match on Wednes­day, while hop­ing that T&T Women – who are cur­rent­ly in third – lose to Ja­maica Women if they are to have any chance of join­ing Lee­ward Is­lands Women in the fi­nal.

T&T owed their win to Jairam and Ram­nath, who sliced their way through Guyana’s mid­dle and low­er or­der.

Fol­low­ing a 15-run open­ing part­ner­ship be­tween Shene­ta Grim­mond and Realean­na Grim­mond, Guyana’s in­nings col­lapsed in sen­sa­tion­al fash­ion.

Ram­nath trapped Shene­ta lbw for one and two runs lat­er Anisa Mo­hammed had Realean­na caught for the top score of 14.

Jairam then joined the par­ty, bowl­ing Shabi­ka Gajn­abi for nine and ac­count­ing for the wick­et of Mandy Man­gru for a duck, to see Guyana slip to 28 for four.

She re­turned to al­so dis­miss Ash­mi­ni Mu­nis­ar and Kaysia Schultz, as Guyana plunged to 40 for sev­en.

Ram­nath then per­formed the fi­nal rites by wrap­ping up the tail to dis­miss their op­po­nents for the low­est to­tal in this year’s com­pe­ti­tion to date.

Jairam end­ed with 4-11, Ram­nath took 3-10 and Mo­hammed 2-8.

Faced with a straight­for­ward run chase, T&T lost open­ers Shunelle Sawh and Lee-Ann Kir­by for ducks with just two runs on the score­board.

But Coop­er scored an un­beat­en 29 off 36 balls and Joseph fin­ished on 27 not out off 37 balls to see T&T to an easy vic­to­ry.

Sum­marised Scores

GUYANA WOMEN 57 in 17 overs (Realean­na Grim­mond 14, La­toya Williams 10, Lau­rene Williams 10 not out; Shriya Jairam 4-11, Sama­ra Ram­nath 3-10, Anisa Mo­hammed 2-8) vs T&T WOMEN 58-2 in 13.2 overs (Brit­ney Coop­er 29 not out, Djen­a­ba Joseph 27 not out).

(CMC)