Vin­ode Mam­chan

While the Bar­ba­di­ans cel­e­brat­ed Kid­dies Kadoo­ment on Sat­ur­day, it was Trinidad Car­ni­val at Kens­ing­ton Oval, as Ke­iron Pol­lard struck a smash­ing un­beat­en 53 against the Lee­ward Is­lands to guide T&T in­to the semi­fi­nals of the Re­gion­al T20 se­ries on Sat­ur­day night. The de­fend­ing re­gion­al cham­pi­ons won by five wick­ets, to book a place in the se­mi-fi­nals to be played on Fri­day in Trinidad. Scores: Lee­wards 161/7 (20) vs T&T 162/5 19 overs.

Set a daunt­ing task of get­ting 162 runs for vic­to­ry af­ter Ker­ry Men­tore (48) and Javier Liburd (39) took their team to com­pet­i­tive score, T&T looked in trou­ble un­til the big-hit­ting Pol­lard ar­rived at the crease. Need­ings 73 runs from 36 balls at 12.15 runs per over with on­ly five wick­ets stand­ing, Pol­lard lived-up to his big-hit­ting rep­u­ta­tion, when he dis­patched the Lee­wards' at­tack for one four and sev­en six­es in an un­beat­en 53 from 20 balls, as T&T suc­cess­ful­ly chased with six balls to spare.

T&T had stum­bled through the first 10 overs of their re­sponse, as Lee­wards' new-ball bowlers Li­onel Bak­er and Gavin Tonge gained ap­pre­cia­ble bounce from the hard, true Kens­ing­ton Oval pitch to put them on the back-foot. Tonge had William Perkins caught at ex­tra cov­er for a duck in the sec­ond over, and Lendl Sim­mons caught be­hind for 11 to leave T&T on 20 for two in the fourth over. Spin­ners Justin Athanze and An­tho­ny Mar­tin then re­moved T&T cap­tain Daren Gan­ga lbw for 17, and Adri­an Barath caught at long-on for 13, as the So­ca Boyz sunk to 51 for four in the ninth over. When Corn­wall bowled De­nesh Ramdin for 21, T&T looked a beat­en side, but for­tune favoured them, when Bak­er twist­ed his an­kle, and had to leave the field, forc­ing Corn­wall to find an­oth­er op­tion in the clos­ing over.

He turned to Toni­to Wil­lett, whose on­ly over cost 27 runs, as Pol­lard in­dulged him­self to race to one of the quick­est 50s in List-A T20 crick­et from 19 balls, and pow­er T&T to the fin­ish. One six went over the Greenidge and Haynes Stand and the score­board apt­ly ad­ver­tised 'Out­ta Here'! Bra­vo re­mained un­beat­en on a run-a-ball 33. At the end of the game man of the match Pol­lard said :"We showed we have that fight­ing spir­it in this team. We have a nev­er say die at­ti­tude and that came out again tonight. I must say con­grat­u­la­tions to the guys on this win."

Pol­lard ad­mit­ted that there were some anx­ious mo­ments in the T&T camp but said it was wel­comed. "With our fi­nal game com­ing up against Ja­maica we need­ed a com­pet­i­tive match and we got it here." Ear­li­er, the Lee­wards thrilled the crowd to some big hit­ting. Some men, built like butch­ers de­cid­ed to make mince meat of the T&T at­tack, to give the un­der­dogs a fight­ing chance. The first 'big man' to take the at­tack to T&T was Kadeem Phillip. He tore in­to the open­ing bowlers and post­ed 20 off 21 balls. His part­ner Javier Liburd, much small­er in size, showed he had im­mense pow­er as well and struck 39 off 37 balls with the help of three fours and two six­es.

Port­ly skip­per Wilden Corn­wall al­so joined in the fun, blast­ing 22 from nine balls. Dave Mo­hammed and Sher­win Gan­ga col­lect­ed two wick­ets apiece to be the pick of the T&T bowl­ing. T&T will meet Ja­maica on Wednes­day on home soil, af­ter the com­pe­ti­tion switch­es to Queen's Park Oval in Port of Spain, to de­ter­mine which side tops Group-A.