Five years ago he sprung up and cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of the Guyanese peo­ple but then failed to live up to their ex­pec­ta­tions. This sea­son is his sec­ond com­ing and Guyana Jaguars bats­man Jonathan Foo showed class on Sat­ur­day night against the T&T Red Force in their Colo­nial Med­ical In­sur­ance Su­per50 clash at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

He fought the en­tire T&T at­tack and car­ried the Jaguars on his back af­ter they ca­pit­u­lat­ed against the qual­i­ty spin of the lo­cal fran­chise. Their fi­nal tal­ly of 218-8 off 46 overs would have been a lot less had it not been for his un­beat­en 97.

While Red Force skip­per Im­ran Khan reaped hav­oc with three wick­ets for 23 runs off his 10 overs, Foo sat back and wait­ed like a thief in the night com­ing out when Khan was away. Foo's 97 came off 92 balls with four six­es and six fours and his stand of 71 runs for the sixth wick­et with Ronal­do Al­imo­hammed was the back­bone of the ef­fort. Al­imo­hammed got 27 but it was price­less.

Ear­li­er, T&T won the toss and de­cid­ed to send Guyana in to bat giv­en the rain around. The dan­ger­ous Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj was first to go, sent back by spin­ner Jon Russ Jagges­sar for eight. The frus­tra­tion that led to his wick­et came from the pain of see­ing just 17 runs on the board in over num­ber eight.

The spin­ners held sway and al­though ball-strik­er Chris Barn­well came in at three, he got tied down as the twirlers were in their el­e­ment. He used 16 balls to notch six runs and could not help his team gath­er mo­men­tum. He couldn't de­pend on the dour Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul at the oth­er end as he bat­ted slow­ly as usu­al.

All the while, the Red Force bowlers were en­joy­ing the af­ter­noon watched by a small gath­er­ing of sup­port­ers.

Soon, Khan would end Chan­der­paul's mis­ery, send­ing him back to the pavil­ion where his il­lus­tri­ous dad Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul was sta­tioned. His 25 came off 58 balls with one hit to the ropes.

Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, who grabbed a five-wick­et haul ear­li­er in the tour­na­ment, then got in­to the act.

SCORES

GUYANA JAGUARS 218-8 (50) (Jonathan Foo 97 no, Ronal­do Al­imo­hammed 27, Veerasam­my Per­maul 22, Im­ran Khan 3/23, Yan­nick Ot­t­ley 2/38) v T&T RED FORCE