Naz Ya­coob

Open­ing bats­man Lendl Sim­mons warmed-up for the up-com­ing ODI and T20 se­ries be­tween West In­dies and Aus­tralia with an ex­cit­ing all-round per­for­mance but it was all in vain as T&T suf­fered a four-wick­et loss against Guyana on Wednes­day night at Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. In a spe­cial­ly arranged T20 match or­gan­ised by the West In­dies Play­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (T&TCB) and the Guyana Crick­et Board, Sim­mons who was re­called by the re­gion­al se­lec­tors for the lim­it­ed overs se­ries next month in Aus­tralia proved his worth with a clas­sic 83 in front of a de­cent crowd at the twin-is­land re­pub­lic Test venue.

The right-hand­ed Sim­mons faced 59 balls and struck five fours and six six­es which helped T&T to tal­ly a com­pet­i­tive 164 for five from the al­lot­ted 20 overs. Fel­low open­er William Perkins struck a hur­ri­cane 26 with five fours off 14 balls. The lead­ing wick­et-tak­er for Guyana was pac­er Esaun Cran­don with two for 21 off four overs. In re­sponse, for­mer West In­dies youth open­ing bats­man Ra­jin­dra Chan­dri­ka hit a blis­ter­ing half-cen­tu­ry to set up the win for Guyana. The right-hand­ed Chan­dri­ka smashed 67 off 40 balls which was en­riched with five fours and four six­es as Guyana chas­ing 165 for vic­to­ry be­fore an ap­pre­cia­tive crowd, reached their tar­get with four balls to spare.

To­geth­er with skip­per and open­ing bats­man Sew­nar­ine Chat­ter­goon, the pair laid the foun­da­tion for the win with an en­ter­pris­ing first-wick­et part­ner­ship of 76 off 45 balls be­fore they were part­ed when Chat­ter­goon was caught by Samuel Badree off Sim­mons for 26. Chan­dri­ka was next to go with the score on 106 caught by wick­et-keep­er De­nesh Ramdin off Sim­mons. Up­on his dis­missal, three more wick­ets fell with the ad­di­tion of one run, be­fore mid­dle-or­der bats­man Roys­ton Cran­don stead­ied the ship with an at­trac­tive un­beat­en 30 with two fours and two six­es off 30 balls, to give the Guyanese team a well de­served win. Sim­mons with four for 27 and left-arm spin­ner Dave Mo­hammed two for 19 were the top bowlers for T&T.