Berbice began their 50 overs Guyana Cricket Board (GCB)/Hand-In-Hand Mutual Fire and Life Insurance Inter-County U19 tournament with a nine-wicket win over the Select U17s at the Tuschen Ground, East Bank Essequibo yesterday.
Berbice won the toss and sent the juniors into bat, dismissing them for a dismal 61 before racing to 67-1 from 62 balls.
With persistent showers dampening sports across the country, Tuschen was spared as the rainfall eased and allowed play to begin at 13:30 which reduced the contest to a 22-overs-a-side affair.
The Select U17s began positively with West Indies youth captain Sachin Singh smashing a delivery from left-arm fast bowler, Javed Karim over the ropes off the first delivery of the match. However, Karim would have some measure of revenge in his next over by cartwheeling the off stump of Guyana U-15 batsman, Nicholas Rajpat who scored just one run from six deliveries to leave the score 8-1.
Kevlon Anderson at the other end struck with his third delivery, forcing Sean Glasgow to edge a catch to Kevin Sinclair and the Select U17s slipped further when Andre Seepersaud fell to Anderson and Nigel Deodat to left arm orthodox spinner Keith Simpson.
Singh, however, batted a class above the rest, and struck a six off Sinclair which he hoisted out the ground into the trench on the northern side of the ground.
He was dropped on 25 after hitting a delivery straight past the bowler for his fourth four but fell in the next delivery, mis-timing a long hop from Simpson and picking out Trevon Stanislaus.
The score at that stage was 43-7 from 12.3 overs.
Gevon Schultz batted patiently, seeing off the good balls to bring up the 50 for the junior side but did not make use of his life given when Steve Deonarine put him down off of Sinclair’s final over that went for 10 runs.
Kelvin Umroa finished off things, bagging three wickets in his first over of the match.
He missed out on a hat trick by bowling a wide delivery and finished with 3-1 while Simpson and Anderson picked up 3-14 from five overs and 2-4 from four overs respectively.
Meanwhile, aggressive Alex Algoo and Junior Sinclair tore into the Select U17s bowling hitting 18 and 15 runs off the first two overs of the match. Algoo was welcomed by a rank knee high full toss which rocketed into the pavilion and was followed by a pull shot that blasted into the shed of the iconic pink ‘music house’ which oversees the ground.
The third over went for 13 runs as a powerful shot from Algoo nearly clipped the female umpire at square leg.
Deodat pulled back the innings only going for one run in his first over while Silvan Williams picked up the wicket of Algoo who miscued a shorter ball from Williams that hit the gloves and sailed into the hands of wicketkeeper Persaud.
His 29 came from 13 balls and upon his dismissal, Karim and Sinclair batted and rotated the strike well to level the score before Sinclair finished it off in style with a massive six out the ground that capped off the dominance of Berbice.
Berbice will now face Demerara at the Lusignan Community Development Centre ground while the Select U17s will meet Essequibo at Everest tomorrow.
