Red Force unbeaten streak ends

COLIN BENJAMIN

CLINTON Pestano’s first career hat-trick propelled the Guyana Jaguars to a shock 75-run victory over a star-studded TT Red Force at the Brian Lara Stadium, Torouba, last evening.

Winning the toss and batting first, Guyana posted a competitive 291/8 in their allotted 50 overs with half centuries from opener Trevon Griffith (70, 83 balls, seven fours and one six) and Barbados born all-rounder Raymond Reifer (66, 55 balls, five fours and two sixes). Ravi Ramapul was the principal wicket-taker for the host with 3/56 for his allotted 10 overs.

In reply the Red Force collapsed from 133/2 in the 27th over to 217 all out in 47.1 overs, with Lendl Simmons (70, 73 balls, six by four and three by six) and Darren Bravo 43 (72 balls, four fours) playing his first match of the tournament, being the lone batsmen to put up substantial resistance.

Pestano and Jamaican born-off spinner shared three wickets a piece, with respective figures of 9-1-47-3 and 10-0-33-3.

The afternoon’s proceedings began in glorious sunshine in front of relatively large crowd compared to the poor attendance for TT Red Force’s previous four games at Queen’s Park Oval.

After the talented young Sherfane Rutherford (15) was dismissed with the score on 31/1 in the fifth over, the aforementioned Griffith and Guyana captain Leon Johnson (35) steadied the innings with a composed 89-run second wicket stand.

Johnson would then perish caught behind tamely attempting a cut shot to Jason Mohammed’s part time off spin.

Dwayne Bravo would excite the crowd with some brilliant athletic fielding, taking a flying one-handed catch to dismiss Griffith whose innings was his fifth half-century in list A cricket, leaving Guyana Jaguars on 159/3 in the 30th over.

Reifer’s innings was his sixth half century at this level. Key supporting roles from Christopher Barnwell (35) and Anthony Bramble (21) helped push Guyana to a competitive first innings total on a good batting wicket that has already produced the three centuries of the Trinidad leg of the competition from Marlon Samuels, Devon Smith and Chanderpaul Hemraj.

The Red Force innings began with Simmons hitting Pestano for two boundaries in the first over, but captain Denesh Ramdin (7) who promoted himself to open in the absence of Evin Lewis, who left the squad for West Indies duty, would be dismissed in the third over, bowled after attempting a cut short via Reifer’s left arm seam bowling.

Mohammed (24) and Simmons got the innings back on track with a 67-run second wicket partnership before he was out caught and bowled to off-spinner Ricardo Adams.

Man of the match Pestano would change the game completely with his hat-trick in the 28th over

Firstly, he got Simmons out for his second fifty of the competition caught by Leon Johnson.

The following delivery, Kieron Pollard was caught behind edging a full delivery to wicket-keeper Bramble. Pollard was cramped on the back due to field setting seemingly expecting a short delivery.

Finally, Dwayne Bravo was caught by Griffith at mid-on after mistiming an attempted pull prompting wild celebrations from the Guyana players.