Jabari Mills' cen­tu­ry gave Cen­tral Sports their first win of the T&T Crick­et Board/Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TTCB/TKR) T20 Fes­ti­val on Fri­day evening at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain. The reign­ing cham­pi­ons lost their first two match­es to York­shire and Marchin Pa­tri­ots and des­per­ate­ly need­ed a win against Preysal to kick­start their cam­paign.

Buoyed by the re­turn of Kamil Pooran, who missed the ear­li­er match­es be­cause of the Re­gion­al First Class du­ty with Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) and T&T Red Force, Cen­tral Sports’ con­fi­dence grew de­spite los­ing both Pooran (1) and skip­per Im­ran Khan (1) with on­ly five runs on the board af­ter they were sent to bat first.

Leonar­do Juien (39) and Mills re­paired the in­nings with a 68-run part­ner­ship. Julien struck four fours and two six­es in his knock but was third out at 73/3 in the sev­enth over. Jesse Bootan stayed around for just two runs but he spent most of his three overs at the crease, sup­port­ing Mills and en­joy­ing his view from 20 yards in their 18-run part­ner­ship.

Roshon Primus came in at num­ber six and hit a six and four fours in his 22-ball 32. He was next out at 167/5 af­ter help­ing to im­prove Cen­tral Sports in­nings with a 76-run part­ner­ship with Mills.

Mills was even­tu­al­ly out at 102 from just 57 balls, with ten fours and six six­es as Cen­tral Sports closed on 208/8 in their 20 overs.

Preysal, with just one win from their three pre­vi­ous match­es, des­per­ate­ly need­ed a win in their last Group A match to give them­selves a chance to squeeze in­to the semi­fi­nal and knock Cen­tral out of con­tention.

They got a promis­ing 33-run part­ner­ship be­tween Aaron Bankey (40) and Ja­son Bat­son (17) in three and a half overs.

Preysal got a fur­ther 62-run part­ner­ship in sev­en and a half overs when Sachin Seecha­ran and Bankey took the score to 95 be­fore the fall of Bankay with the last ball of the 11th over. By that time, Preysal need­ed a fur­ther 114 runs from 54 balls.

The Cen­tral Sports bowlers rose to the oc­ca­sion and re­strict­ed Preysal to 167/5 on­ly al­low­ing 72 runs from the fi­nal 54 balls to stran­gle the Presyal run-chase.

Seecha­ran made 50 and for­mer Queen’s Park open­er Camil­lo Carim­bo­cas made 24 but their ef­forts were not good enough to pre­vent Preysal from crash­ing out of the tour­na­ment by 41 runs.

In the sec­ond match of the evening, Evin Lewis’ good form con­tin­ued with a 45-ball 89 but it was not enough to get Bess Mo­tors Marchin Pa­tri­ots over the line against Queen’s Park Crick­et Club (QPCC).

Marchin Pa­tri­ots were sent in­to bat first and scored 206/7 with Lewis sup­port­ed by Crys­t­ian Thur­ton (39) and Kadeem Al­leyne (21). The first-wick­et part­ner­ship be­tween Lewis and Al­leyne pro­duced 55 runs and the sec­ond-wick­et part­ner­ship be­tween Lewis and Thur­ton added 86 runs to lay the foun­da­tion for the score. Gio­vante De­peiza added an un­beat­en 27 at the back end of the in­nings.

In re­ply, the Parkites got an im­pres­sive 74-run part­ner­ship be­tween Kyle Ram­doo (57) and Joshua Da Sil­va (38). Af­ter the wick­et of Da Sil­va, Ram­doo was then joined by An­dre ‘Spice­man’ Fletch­er who belt­ed 69 from 30 balls with sev­en six­es and three fours and to­geth­er they shared in a part­ner­ship that count­ed 72 runs in just five overs and five balls. At the time of Ram­doo’s dis­missal with the last ball of the 13th over, Queen’s Park need­ed a fur­ther 61 runs from 42 balls with eight wick­ets in hand.

De­spite Fletch­er’s dis­missal at 190/3 in the 17th over, Queen’s Park rolled to the win with the first ball of the 19th over with Dar­ren Bra­vo un­beat­en on 26 and Jyd Goolie, back from Red Force du­ty on eight not out. Queen’s Park re­bound­ed from Wednes­day’s loss to York­shire with a sev­en-wick­et win to join Marchin Pa­tri­ots and York­shire on four points. Marchin missed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­firm their po­si­tion in the semi­fi­nal, but can still do so against York­shire this evening.

Mean­while, Cen­tral Sports (2 points) need to win against QPCC (4 points) to have a chance, de­pend­ing on net run rate, to get in­to the next stage.

The win­ner of the match be­tween Marchin and York­shire gets a straight tick­et to Fri­day’s semi­fi­nals while the los­er will hope Cen­tral Sports beat QPCC and then wait for net run rate to de­ter­mine who will go the knock stage. QPCC will book its place for Fri­day with a win against Cen­tral Sports.

Sum­marised scores

Marchin Pa­tri­ots 206 /7 (20 overs) (Evin Lewis 89; Philton Williams 3-40) vs QPCC 207/3 (18.1 overs0 (An­dre Fletch­er 69; Kyle Ram­doo 57; Ri­val­do Ram­lo­gan 2-36). Queen’s Park won by 7 wick­ets.

Cen­tral Sports 208 /8 (20 overs) (Jabari Mills 102; Justyn Gan­goo 2-29; Lemuel Matthews 2-44) vs Preysal 167 /5 (20 overs) (Sachin Seecha­ran 50; Aaron Bankay 49; Jabari Mills 2-35). Cen­tral Sports won by 41 runs.