IAN WA­SON

gm­sports@guardian.co.tt

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice com­plet­ed the North Zone Crick­et Coun­cil tre­ble af­ter de­feat­ing Gleno­ra Crick­et Club in a one-sided af­fair to win the T20 com­pe­ti­tion at the Diego Mar­tin Sports Com­plex on Sun­day evening.

In so do­ing, the ‘Law­men’ fin­ished this sea­son un­beat­en as they gained pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion Two and won the 40 overs for­mat with­out tast­ing de­feat.

Po­lice met Gleno­ra in Group One of the first round, but the rain in­ter­vened when Po­lice reached 203 for 3 in 17.4 overs. There was no rain to stop Po­lice this time around as Nicholas Sookdeosingh made good use of his five chances, the first when he was on ze­ro, the first ball of the in­nings.

The Clarke Road bats­man edged the very first ball of the in­nings on the leg­side to wick­et­keep­er Za­kariyya Mo­hammed, who took the catch, but up­on run­ning off to cel­e­brate with the bowler Sion Hack­ett and the rest of the team, the ball es­caped his grip. The um­pire, who had al­ready sig­nalled out, re­versed the de­ci­sion af­ter con­sult­ing his col­league at square leg.

Mo­hammed, who places a high val­ue on his crick­et, was not easy on him­self as the dropped catch or mis­take played on his mind for the rest of the Po­lice in­nings. Oth­er se­nior play­ers, in­clud­ing cap­tain Ken­roy Williams and Dyanand ‘Danc­ing Dio’ Patrick sought re­peat­ed­ly to re­as­sure their con­fi­dence in the 14-year-old wick­et­keep­er.

De­journ Charles and Sookdeosingh (both guest play­ers from Clarke Road Unit­ed) put to­geth­er a huge 105-run part­ner­ship in eight overs be­fore Charles was caught at deep cov­er by Hack­ett off the pace bowl­ing of Kamil Pooran. Charles was se­vere on any bowler whether good ball or bad ball, short or full, off­side or leg­side. He hit sev­en six­es in the in­nings, to add to his tour­na­ment-high of 38 six­es.

Sookdeosingh went on to be dropped a to­tal of five times, one of which, was an ef­fort Nasee­bul­lah would nor­mal­ly take with his eyes closed. Mo­hammed dropped an­oth­er, this time a ski­er to add to his dis­ap­point­ment, al­though he was lat­er named the wick­et­keep­er with the most catch­es and the youngest play­er of the tour­na­ment.

Sookeosingh hit a to­tal of eight fours and six six­es in his 100 not-out. The for­mer T&T play­er faced just 61 balls in his knock, as Po­lice closed on 216 for two in their 20 overs.

If Gleno­ra was to get any­where close to the tar­get, they need­ed good con­tri­bu­tions from guest play­ers Pooran and Hack­ett, as well as cap­tain Williams. One can­not blame the Gleno­ra team for be­ing con­fi­dent, as they have been in fine form.

Pooran came in­to the match on the back of 147 not out and 43 not out, with­out be­ing dis­missed in the two match­es that he played. Hack­ett’s scored 147 runs in three in­nings but did not have an av­er­age com­ing in­to the match be­cause he was not dis­missed. Williams av­er­aged 37 with a top score of 71, which he achieved twice so one would not bet against Gleno­ra.

But the ‘crick­et Gods’ and Mur­phy’s Law had oth­er plans. Williams hit two six­es, but go­ing for a third, mis­cued and was caught for 14. Mur­phy’s Law states “Any­thing that can go wrong will go wrong”, and per­haps Pooran’s in­nings epit­o­mised the law.

Pooran (24) was dis­missed for the first time in the tour­na­ment, his third in­nings and Hack­ett (4), af­ter three in­nings, al­so lost his wick­et for the first time. What a time for that to hap­pen.

Wick­ets con­tin­ued to tum­ble, as Gleno­ra lost sev­en wick­ets in 37 runs as they were bowled out for 101.

Po­lice won by 115 runs, and Sookdeosingh was named “Man-of-the-Match”.

BRIEF SCORES

PO­LICE 216 / 2 (20 overs) (Nicholas Sookdeosingh 101, De­journ Charles 60, Hack­ett 1-27, Pooran 1-31) vs GLENO­RA 101 (20 overs) (Nicholas Pooran 24, Keon Ma­son 20, Damien Brown 3-11, Mikel RI­ley 2-10). Po­lice won by 115 runs.