FORT LAUD­ERDALE – Bermu­di­an left-han­der Del­ray Rawl­ins smashed 75 dur­ing an un­bro­ken cen­tu­ry stand to pow­er the Flori­da Scor­pi­ons to a 50-run vic­to­ry over the pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en Pun­jab Blues at the US Open Crick­et T20 in Flori­da on Fri­day.

The Sus­sex all-rounder ham­mered five six­es and five fours in his 44-ball in­nings at the Cen­tral Broward Re­gion­al Park ground, to guide the Scor­pi­ons to 208 for two – the high­est to­tal at the tour­na­ment to date af­ter be­ing asked to bat first.

Rawl­ins put on 127 for the third wick­et with Scot­tish in­ter­na­tion­al Calum MacLeod, who made 64 not out.

Ear­li­er, Rawl­ins’ com­pa­tri­ot Ka­mau Leve­rock, the vice-cap­tain, fell for sev­en in adding 22 for the first wick­et with Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al and wick­et­keep­er-bats­man John Simp­son, who made 47.

The Pun­jab Blues, led by Unit­ed States wick­et­keep­er-bats­man Jaskaran Mal­ho­tra’s 86 not out and Sri Lan­ka all-rounder She­han Jaya­suriya’s 39, re­cov­ered from an ear­ly top-or­der col­lapse but could on­ly man­age 158 for six in re­ply.

Scot­tish in­ter­na­tion­al left-arm spin­ner Hamza Tahir did the dam­age, claim­ing re­mark­able fig­ures of five for 14 in his al­lot­ted four overs.

The Scor­pi­ons’ sec­ond win of the tour­na­ment, fol­low­ing a five-wick­et de­feat to the Ti­tans Crick­et Club 24 hours ear­li­er, cat­a­pult­ed them to the top of Group B on net run rate over Samp Army and Pun­jab Blues.

They will now meet Samp Army in their fi­nal group match on Sun­day.

CMC