Trinidad and To­ba­go will face Bar­ba­dos at Coolidge, An­tigua on Fri­day in the fi­nal round of the West In­dies Ris­ing Stars Women’s Un­der-19 tour­na­ment, with both sides al­ready guar­an­teed places in Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal. To­day’s en­counter will there­fore serve as a dress re­hearsal, giv­ing both teams an op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sess what the oth­er brings ahead of the ti­tle de­cider.

Trinidad and To­ba­go en­ter the con­test in red-hot form, led by cap­tain Sama­ra Ram­nath, who has been in scin­til­lat­ing touch. The West In­dies Un­der-19 cap­tain has claimed 15 wick­ets in four match­es, in­clud­ing a hat-trick against the Wind­ward Is­lands on Tues­day, be­fore fol­low­ing that per­for­mance with re­mark­able fig­ures of four for three against the Lee­ward Is­lands on Wednes­day.

The Twin-Is­land Re­pub­lic has been ruth­less with the ball, dis­miss­ing three of its four op­po­nents for few­er than 55 runs.

Ja­maica, who man­aged 39 runs; the Wind­ward Is­lands, re­strict­ed to 52; and the Lee­ward Is­lands, bowled out for 50, have all strug­gled against Ram­nath and vice-cap­tain Bri­an­na Har­richa­ran. On­ly Guyana avoid­ed los­ing all ten wick­ets to Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­though they were still lim­it­ed to 79 for sev­en from their 20 overs.

Ram­nath is com­fort­ably the tour­na­ment’s lead­ing wick­et-tak­er, with 15 wick­ets for 41 runs from 12.2 overs.

Har­richa­ran is next on the list, al­so pro­duc­ing im­pres­sive fig­ures of nine wick­ets for 39 runs from 11.5 overs. Her tour­na­ment be­gan with eye-catch­ing fig­ures of three wick­ets with­out con­ced­ing a run from five balls against Ja­maica last Sat­ur­day.

It is lit­tle won­der that Ram­nath, while con­fi­dent, does not want to make ma­jor changes to the team’s ap­proach against the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons.

Speak­ing af­ter the vic­to­ry over the Wind­ward Is­lands at Lib­er­ta, Ram­nath re­mained mea­sured.

“We’re just go­ing to keep it sim­ple and try and con­tin­ue do­ing what we have done in the pre­vi­ous match­es,” Ram­nath ex­plained.

“We’ll con­tin­ue the work we’ve been do­ing over the past three games. I know it’s a new venue, so we’re go­ing to have to ad­just to the con­di­tions re­al­ly quick­ly. As an open­ing pair and as bat­ters, we need to as­sess the con­di­tions quick­ly, and as bowlers, as­sess the con­di­tions as well,” the cap­tain said.

For Bar­ba­dos, the 2025 win­ners, star bat­ter Eboni Brath­waite tops the tour­na­ment’s run-scor­ing charts with 152 runs, boost­ed by a record-break­ing un­beat­en 135 against the Lee­ward Is­lands.

Brath­waite, like Ram­nath, is not plan­ning any ma­jor changes to her ap­proach, in­stead fo­cus­ing on us­ing her strengths to her ad­van­tage.

“I would just try not to be ner­vous and stay in con­trol of my­self be­cause I know I have a bit of a short tem­per,” Brath­waite said.

“But it kind of helps too be­cause it al­lows me to hit the ball bet­ter. I just need to stay in con­trol, re­lax, and play hard with my team.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­rent­ly sit atop the stand­ings with a per­fect eight points from four match­es, while Bar­ba­dos have sev­en af­ter their open­ing match against Guyana was aban­doned.

Ja­maica is third on four points, but with on­ly one round re­main­ing, they can­not over­take ei­ther Bar­ba­dos or Trinidad and To­ba­go. The re­sult has con­firmed the top two teams’ places in Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal.

Else­where to­day, the Wind­ward Is­lands will meet Ja­maica at Coolidge, while the Lee­ward Is­lands face Guyana at Lib­er­ta. Those match­es will de­ter­mine the teams’ po­si­tions and qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the third-place match, while the bot­tom two sides will con­test the fifth-place match at Lib­er­ta.