Group A defending champions Trinidad and Tobago Red Force yesterday qualified for the semi-finals of the CG United Super 50 2022 Cup.
Match 22 of the CG Super 50 2022 series between the Winward Islands Volcanoes and the Trinidad and Tobago Red Force was played yesterday at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba and The host managed to win by 7 wickets.
Captain Nicholas Pooran won the toss and invited Volcanoes to bat first. Red Force senior pacers Shannon Gabriel and Akeal Hosein did not allow the Volcanoes’ front four batters to stay on the wicket for long.
However, Sunil Ambris and the destructive batsman Andre Fletcher managed to bring life to the scoreboard of the Volcanoes team, which had fallen to 04 wickets at 36. Together they built an unbroken partnership of 165 runs.
Ambris added 90 runs in 101 balls with two sixes and eight fours. Fletcher played a very patient innings and scored 68 runs with one six and three fours. In bowling, Akeal Hossain took two wickets and Shannon Gabriel took one wicket for the Red Force.
The Volcanoes scored 201 for 4 in 40 overs when rain stopped the day/night match at 5 o’clock. And the revised Duckworth/Lewis/Stern (DLS) target proved tricky. Chasing a mammoth target of 249, Red Force’s Amir Jangoo fell for two in the fifth over and the hosts did not get off to the best of starts.
But Kjorn Ottley and Jason Mohammed put on a 49-run stand to take the scoreboard to 71 runs. However, Mohammed was caught by Johnson Charles off Justin Greaves for 25.
Ottley resisted for a while longer before he was bowled by Greaves for 43, leaving the hosts in dire straits at 84 for three. But captain Nicholas Pooran and senior player Darren Bravo put on an unbeaten 165-run stand to save the team and secure a place in the semi-finals by scoring 249 runs for 3 wickets with an over remaining.
Bravo scored an unbeaten 67 off 63 balls with 9 fours as the captain defended his end for the team’s victory. Also, skipper Pooran scored an unbeaten 99 in 73 balls and that innings included two sixes and 11 fours.
Captain Nicholas Pooran, who was the anchor of the Red Force’s victory, was named man of the match. Prior to this match, the Guyana Harpy Eagles entered the semi-finals as the second-placed team in Group A defeating Combined Campus and College at the Queen’s Park Oval in St. Clair.
Today, the 23rd match of the series will be played between Barbados and Iceland at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, North Sound, Antigua.