Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of Ch­agua­nas will face per­haps its strongest op­po­si­tion to date when the team hosts St Mary’s Col­lege when com­pe­ti­tion in the Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et League (SS­CL) Pre­mier Di­vi­sion re­sumes at the school’s ground in Ch­agua­nas on Thurs­day.

Pre­sen­ta­tion is one of on­ly two teams that are still un­beat­en in the league while St Mary’s ex­pe­ri­enced its first loss last week to reign­ing cham­pi­on team Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of San Fer­nan­do at St Mary’s Ground in Port-of-Spain.

The ‘Saints’ of St Mary’s will be re­ly­ing on all-rounders Mikaeel Ali and Samir Sa­roop and the tal­ent­ed duo of Khal­i­fani Wilt­shire and Josi­ah Nichols to keep them in the top half of the stand­ings.

Pre­sen­ta­tion, on the oth­er hand, will hope that Jay­don Joseph’s form re­turns. The open­er scored 111 and 108 in the open­ing rounds against Hillview Col­lege and El Do­ra­do East, re­spec­tive­ly, but had re­turned fig­ures of duck and two since. How­ev­er, where he failed, na­tion­al Un­der-17 cap­tain and all-rounder Fa­reez Ali filled in. The for­mer Na­pari­ma Col­lege cap­tain scored 133 not out against St Bene­dict’s Col­lege and has an av­er­age of 79.

In oth­er match­es, Pre­sen­ta­tion San Fer­nan­do will at­tempt to reg­is­ter its fourth win and third on the trot when the team vis­its Moru­ga to play Princes Town West Sec­ondary School.

Princes Town, one of the two pro­mot­ed teams in the di­vi­sion, is find­ing life tough since be­ing pro­mot­ed and has so far record­ed one vic­to­ry which came against El Do­ra­do which is al­so a new­ly pro­mot­ed team. Pre­sen­ta­tion on­ly loss to date came at the hands of Vish­nu Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege and will be re­ly­ing on a re­turn to form of top bat­ter Riyaad Mo­hammed who scored 107 against St Mary’s last week.

Mo­hammed who was the top bat­ter last sea­son lies fourth on the list so far this year with 215 ag­gre­gate runs at an av­er­age of 53.75.

Princes Town may find the bowl­ing of Ja­cen Agard, Aa­di­an Racha, and Chris­tain Ram­per­sad a hand­ful, and this match can be fin­ished very ear­ly if Pre­sen­ta­tion choos­es to field first.

But the most en­ter­tain­ing match is at Bam­boo, where the un­beat­en Vish­nu Boys hosts Fa­ti­ma. This match will see the two top bat­ters face-off, An­drew Ram­baran of Vish­nu and Fa­ti­ma’s Zachary Siewah.

Ram­baran hit one cen­tu­ry and 94 not out so far and is av­er­ag­ing 85.3 so far and while they played three of the weak­er teams in the first four rounds, he scored 94 not out against a Racha-less Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege. The ex­pe­ri­enced all-rounder who turned out for North in the se­nior North-South Clas­sic will car­ry the bur­den of the bat­ting against a Fa­ti­ma bowl­ing at­tack head­ed by Caiden Mack, with sol­id bowlers in Zachary Siewah and Adri­an Ma­hase.

Fa­ti­ma on the oth­er hand won match­es against St Bene­dict’s and Hillview col­leges but lost to the two Pre­sen­ta­tion col­lege teams. They will be hop­ing that they come out fir­ing on all cylin­ders to hand Visnhu their first loss.

Thurs­day’s match­es

El Do­ra­do

El Do­ra­do East vs St Bene­dict’s

Lewis St, San Fer­nan­do

Na­pari­ma vs Hillview

Pre­sen­ta­tion grounds, Ch­agua­nas:

Pre­sen­ta­tion Ch­agua­nas vs St Mary’s Col­lege

Moru­ga

Princes Town West vs Pre­sen­ta­tion San Fer­nan­do

Bam­boo Set­tle­ment

Vish­nu Boys vs Fa­ti­ma