IAN WA­SON

gm­sports@guardian.co.tt

Daron Cruick­shank scored a mas­ter­class dou­ble hun­dred in Diego Mar­tin on the week­end as he helped Pro­man Mer­ry Boys re­turn to the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) Pre­mier­ship I.

Pris­ons were on the re­ceiv­ing end of the in­nings, as the for­mer Queen’s Park Crick­et Club all­rounder scored 239 as Mer­ry Boys post­ed 455 in their on­ly in­nings at the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Sports Com­plex, re­spond­ing to Pris­ons’ first in­nings to­tal of 226 in the lat­est round in the TTCB Pre­mier­ship II (North).

The for­mer T&T Red Force play­er, who played 11 First Class match­es for the Diego Mar­tin-based team hit 22 fours and sev­en max­i­mums in his 233-ball knock. The 36-year-old had good sup­port from for­mer Red Force bats­man, 35-year-old Mar­lon Bar­clay, who scored 121 from 174 balls with 14 fours. The two cen­tu­ri­ons shared a 286-run part­ner­ship that took the score from 58/2 to 344/3. Amit Sankar took 4/125 and Bryan Boodram took 3/110, as they were the best Pris­ons bowlers.

When Pris­ons bat­ted first, they got a top score of 59 from Jonathan Singh and Amit Ram­per­sad con­tributed 51. Tevon Jadoo took 4/73 while Dar­ren De­onar­ine took 3/35.

In their sec­ond turn at the crease, Pris­ons scored 80/7 as Mer­ry Boys went their mer­ry way on to the 2024 TTCB Pre­mier­ship I.

Skip­per Mario Bel­con, who played three List A match­es for the Red Force in 2007, shared what qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the high­est lev­el of crick­et lo­cal­ly means.

He said, “When you put in the hard work and the plan comes to­geth­er, it is a pleas­ant feel­ing. To know that you work so hard for some­thing and achiev­ing it in the end.”

Bel­con, who al­so has five T20 match­es for Red Force, long be­fore the in­cep­tion of the Caribbean Pre­mier League, said, “Play­ing in the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion II is the first time that I have been com­pet­ing at this lev­el and due to COVID (19), we stayed here a lit­tle longer than we an­tic­i­pat­ed.”

The right-hand­ed open­er who scored a run-a-ball 40 in Sat­ur­day’s drawn match against Pris­ons, sent a warn­ing to the teams they will be fac­ing in 2024: “We’re not com­ing up there to make up names, we’re com­ing up there to com­pete.”

In Pre­mier­ship II (South), Cal­drac (115), Marchin Sports (114) and York­shire (113) are all in a keen three-way bat­tle for pro­mo­tion in­to Pre­mier­ship I, next sea­son. They all got wins over Bar­rack­pore, Cos­mos and St Julien, re­spec­tive­ly, over the week­end.