All­rounder Mar­lon Richards scored a counter-at­tack­ing half-cen­tu­ry on day one of the Red Force crick­et team's Four-Day tri­al match at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va yes­ter­day.

Bat­ting for the Isa­iah Ra­jah XI against the Kea­gan Sim­mons XI, Richards smashed four six­es and two fours dur­ing his knock of 51 which helped his team to reach 190 all out.

Af­ter win­ning the toss, the Ra­jah XI lost Cephas Coop­er caught be­hind by Leonar­do Julien from the bowl­ing of pac­er Jar­lanie Seales for no score with just three runs on the board.

From then on, they con­tin­ued to lose wick­ets reg­u­lar­ly as Daniel St Clair came to the par­ty. The 33-year-old would go on to record fig­ures of five wick­ets for 44 runs from 13.2 overs.

On­ly two of the Ra­jah XI's top five bats­men reached dou­ble dig­it scores. Open­ing bats­man Nicholas Alex­is made 12 and Ra­jah made 18. In fact, they had to wait un­til their num­ber sev­en bats­man Jharon Al­fred came to the mid­dle for a no­table score. He made 28.

Af­ter his dis­missal, mak­ing the score 96 for 8 wick­ets, Richards put on a crit­i­cal 92-run stand with Bryan Charles. To­geth­er they pushed their team up to 188 be­fore Richards' dis­missal for 51.

In re­ply, the Sim­mons XI reached 33 for the loss of one wick­et at the close of play with Julien dis­missed for 0. The not out bats­men are Sim­mons on eight and Jyd Goolie on 19.

DAY ONE SCORES:

Isa­iah Ra­jah XI 190 (Richards 51 Al­fred 28; St Clair 5/44) vs Kea­gan Sim­mons XI 33/1 (Sim­mons 8 no, Golie 19 no).