South got the bet­ter of de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Cen­tral in the open­ing match of the Flow Girls Hard Ball crick­et tour­na­ment or­gan­ised by the Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et League at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day.

South which won the ti­tle for the first two years in 2017 and 2018, bat­ted first and scored 137 for one of 20 overs. Na­tion­al Un­der-19 play­er Djen­a­ba Joseph bat­ted very well to get the top-score of 44. Joseph fea­tured in a first wick­et part­ner­ship of 57 with Suriya Sookoo. The lat­ter re­tired hurt on 10 and in came skip­per Shali­ni Sama­roo who spanked 41 not out. Cen­tral had its field­ing to blame for the teams' loss af­ter many dropped catch­es and had nu­mer­ous missed-fields as well.

Cen­tral chas­ing 138, failed to im­press falling for just 67 runs all out. Skip­per Shunelle Sawh was the on­ly bat­ter to get in­to dou­ble fig­ures mak­ing 12. Joseph was bril­liant with the ball in tak­ing three wick­ets for just five runs, to hand South vic­to­ry by 71 runs.

Ear­li­er, pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et League (SS­CL) Su­ru­j­dath Ma­habir thanked Flow for its com­mit­ment for an­oth­er three years and said that the com­pa­ny's con­tri­bu­tion is al­ready bear­ing tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. “We thank Flow for stay­ing with us as you have done great in as­sist­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of girl’s crick­et in this coun­try. We are hap­py for the con­tin­ued sup­port and I would like to let you know that sev­er­al play­ers have al­ready come through this sys­tem to rep­re­sent the coun­try.”

Rep­re­sent­ing Flow was Yolande Agard –Sim­mons, the man­ag­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tions who gave her com­pa­ny’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of girls crick­et. “We are hap­py with what we have seen thus far and we stand ready to as­sist the Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et league with their crick­et de­vel­op­ment work.”

She cre­at­ed quite a stir when she used re­marks made by the leg­endary Bri­an Lara to the girls, telling them that their game is men­tal and that they must lap up his con­tri­bu­tions. She used the icon as an ex­am­ple of what needs to be done to achieve suc­cess.