Vin­ode Mam­chan

Men in white wigs might now de­ter­mine who should go to the fi­nals of the Re­gion­al First Class tour­na­ment, af­ter men in white flan­nels could not do it on the field. T&T chas­ing Ja­maica's first in­nings to­tal of 664 fin­ished the day on 448 for nine, en­sur­ing a no-re­sult.At the con­clu­sion of play, man­ag­er of the T&T team Omar Khan said the lo­cal squad would seek le­gal ad­vice on the way for­ward."There is still some mis-in­ter­pre­ta­tion con­cern­ing the rule per­tain­ing to ad­vanc­ing to the fi­nals. The WICB has made it clear that Ja­maica would move on to the fi­nals but we have seeked le­gal ad­vice and we are wait­ing on a de­ter­mi­na­tion be­fore we move for­ward."

Ac­cord­ing to the rules em­ployed by the WICB, if the game end­ed in a no-re­sult, the team which got more points in the head to head clash would ad­vance. Ja­maica de­feat­ed T&T on first in­nings in their pre­lim­i­nary clash.Khan con­tin­ued: "We find it very un­fair be­cause you could play all sea­son and get 66 points and top the league and you play the fourth place team with 20 points and they could ad­vance on a no-re­sult, if they got a first in­nings against us."What is the re­ward of play­ing con­sis­tent crick­et all sea­son then?"

Lead­ing the way for the hosts were skip­per Daren Gan­ga with 107 and all­rounder Rayad Em­rit, who fin­ished un­beat­en on 113. When the clock struck ex­act­ly 6 pm the play­ers shook hands and that was that for this clash.Gan­ga and Em­rit give the hand­ful of spec­ta­tors who showed up at the ground some­thing to smile about as they scored won­der­ful in­di­vid­ual hun­dreds to keep the Ja­maicans in the sun for the en­tire day.Ear­li­er, T&T re­sumed on the overnight po­si­tion of 198 for four and any thoughts of a run chase, went through the win­dow with the ear­ly dis­missal of De­nesh Ramdin.The wick­et­keep­er/bats­man was un­lucky to be giv­en out caught be­hind off An­dre Rus­sell for 54. Ramdin looked quite dis­pleased with the de­ci­sion and trudged off de­ject­ed­ly with the score at 292. His as­so­ci­a­tion with Gan­ga was worth 83 runs for the sixth wick­et.

At the fall of his wick­et, the burly Ke­iron Pol­lard came in and took a while to set­tle. How­ev­er, he soon took cue from Gan­ga and start­ed to slam the bowl­ing around. Gan­ga again looked the part and was clear­ly un­trou­bled. The right-han­der soon brought up his third cen­tu­ry of the sea­son in 362 min­utes, 233 balls with eight fours. His ex­ploits this sea­son would def­i­nite­ly have the West In­dies se­lec­tors look­ing in his di­rec­tion. He fi­nal­ly fell for 107 af­ter es­say­ing a tired pull to deep mid-wick­et off the bowl­ing of Odean Brown.

Em­rit was the last of the recog­nised bats­men at the crease and he got the tail to bat with him. First­ly he and Ravi Ram­paul (25) added 45 for the eight wick­et to frus­trate the vis­i­tors. The pen­cil-slim Em­rit played to his strengths and fin­ished the sea­son how he start­ed, in great form. He fin­ished un­beat­en on 113 eclips­ing his pre­vi­ous best of 112 against Bar­ba­dos.He forged a ninth-wick­et part­ner­ship of 94 with Amit Jag­ger­nauth (12) and dur­ing the process brought up his sec­ond re­gion­al First Class hun­dred. It came in 160 min­utes, off 126 balls with 15 fours and one six.

SCORE­BOARD

T&T vs Ja­maica

Ja­maica inns 664

T&T inns

(overnight 198/4)

L Sim­mons b Dawes 5

I Khan lbw Rus­sell 17

D Bra­vo c Jack­son b Dawes 0

D Gan­ga c Nash b Brown 107

S Gan­ga c Wal­ton b Rus­sell 42

D Ramdin c Wal­ton b Rus­sell 54

K Pol­lard lbw Bernard 48

R Em­rit not out 113

R Ram­paul c Wal­ton b Rus­sell 25

A Jag­ger­nauth c Bernard b Nash 12

S Gabriel not out 5

Ex­tras b1, lb12, nb8 21

To­tal for 9 wk­ts 448

Fall wk­ts: 17, 28, 28, 111, 209, 292, 293, 338, 432.

Bowl­ing: A Rus­sell 22-3-89-4 (nb2), J Dawes 27-5-63-2, D Hy­att 1-0-5-0, D Bernard 20-4-63-1 (nb6), O Brown 39-6-140-1, T Lam­bert 12-2-30-0, Bren­dan Nash 11-3-37-1, W Hinds 2-0-8-0.

Re­sult: No re­sult.

Man-of-match: Bren­dan Nash.