Bren­dan Boodoo and Aa­di­an Racha warmed up for Wednes­day’s In­ter­col Fi­nal with strong per­for­mances to lead South to the Price Club North-South Un­der-17 Clas­sic com­pe­ti­tion at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Monday.

Boodoo scored 47 not out af­ter Racha ripped through North’s top or­der with 3 for 7 as South won by eight wick­ets to add the Un­der-17 ti­tle to the Un­der-15 ver­sions. The Un­der-15 team was cap­tained by Boodoo.

North was sent in to bat first and was in­stant­ly put un­der pres­sure as Racha struck with the 3rd ball of the in­nings, ex­tract­ing an edge from Sameer Sa­roops’ bat to the wick­et­keep­er for a duck. Ryan Year­wood fol­lowed in the next over, al­so with­out scor­ing off the bowl­ing of Alexan­der Chase as North lost two wick­ets for two runs in two overs. The open­ing bowlers had tak­en half of North’s bat­ting with just 22 runs on the board in 8.5 overs.

North nev­er re­cov­ered as first-change bowler Alvin Son­ny con­tin­ued where Chase and Racha left off and snapped up two wick­ets of his own. It took num­ber 10 bats­man Shep­phan McPher­son to reach 21 and Ab­dul Ra­heem Top­pin who bat­ted at sev­en to score 17 to take the score past 50 and even­tu­al­ly to 88 all out.

Racha sharp­ened up for Pre­sen­ta­tion’s In­ter­col Fi­nal match against Fa­ti­ma on Wednes­day with fig­ures of 3 for 7 from six overs, while Alexan­der Chase took 2 for 15 off five and Alvin Son­ny took 2 for 22 off six.

In re­ply, South cruised to 89 for 2 in on­ly 8.3 overs. Na­tion­al un­der 15 cap­tain, Bren­dan Boodoo con­tin­ued his fine form with a blaz­ing 47 not out from just 26 balls. Luke Ali scored 17.

South cruised to the ti­tle by eight wick­ets. Racha for his bowl­ing ef­fort was named man-of-the-match.

To­day, North Un­der-19 will at­tempt to avenge de­feats that their un­der-15 and 17 teams in the North-South Clas­sic that were played in March and April re­spec­tive­ly. The Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va will host to­day’s fi­nal.

Af­ter win­ning the 4-Day se­nior North-South Clas­sic, North had tast­ed on­ly de­feat in the un­der-15 and un­der-17 match­es and is des­per­ate to make amends. The match will see more Pre­sen­ta­tion San Fer­nan­do play­ers (Nick­yle Jal­im, Riyaad Mo­hammed, and Ri­car­do Chase) warm­ing up for the In­ter­col fi­nal against Fa­ti­ma play­ers in North (Zachary Siewah and Joshua Davis) in what could be used as a warm-up for the In­ter­col fi­nal.