He stayed and he played. A de­layed flight sig­nalled prob­lems for Clarke Road Unit­ed, as it meant that Sunil Nar­ine would not leave for In­dia at the sched­uled time, thus al­low­ing the ace off-spin­ner to line up for Queen’s Park Crick­et Club I at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain in the T&T Crick­et Board Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion I, on Sat­ur­day.

Nar­ine has tak­en 31 wick­ets in the pre­vi­ous three match­es with four con­sec­u­tive five-wick­et hauls in the lead-up to the clash with Clarke Road and the Clarke Road bats­men would have been hap­py had the flight re­mained as sched­uled.

In­stead, it was Nar­ine, who bam­boo­zled the bats­men as he took mag­i­cal fig­ures in 6.4 overs, six maid­ens and sev­en wick­ets for no runs, as sev­en was cer­tain­ly Clarke Road’s un­lucky num­ber.

Queen’s Park did not hes­i­tate to bowl first on a pitch that was ac­tu­al­ly a fourth-day sur­face, as the match is be­ing played on the same pitch the Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes de­feat­ed the Bar­ba­dos Pride in­side three days on Fri­day.

Jon Russ Jagge­sar and Sion Hack­et cleared the way for Nar­ine, as they got rid of the first three Clarke Road bats­men, De­journ Charles, Nicholas Sookdeosingh and Joshua Per­saud. Then, Nar­ine pro­duced his mag­i­cal bowl­ing spell as the Clarke Road bats­men had no clue how to play the off-spin­ner.

Clarke Road was even­tu­al­ly bun­dled over for 76 runs in on­ly 24 overs.

In their turn at the crease, Queen’s Park seemed to have bat­ted on a dif­fer­ent pitch as the bats­men had lit­tle is­sues in get­ting to 268 for 3 de­clared.

All of the bats­men got starts, with Isa­iah Ra­jah get­ting to 100 not out from on­ly 98 balls with eight fours and two six­es. Kirstan Kallicha­ran got to 64, while Camil­lo Carim­bo­cas con­tin­ued his good form to score 57 and Jor­dan Warn­er got to 46.

At the close of play, league lead­ers Clarke Road were 16 with­out loss in their sec­ond in­nings, with an en­tire day to save the match and earn a draw, pos­si­bly set­ting Queen’s Park a tar­get. But to do that, they have to find a way to keep Nar­ine out, as the In­dia-bound spin­ner now has 38 wick­ets in just his fourth match this sea­son.

At In­vaders Ground in Fe­lic­i­ty, Ch­agua­nas, out of favour West In­dies white ball open­er Evin Lewis scored 206 for his sec­ond hun­dred of the sea­son.

The hard-hit­ting left-han­der hit 12 fours and nine six­es in his 22-ball knock.

Navin Bidi­asee added 119 and Daniel Williams scored 85 as Pow­er­gen forced Cen­tral Sports to field all day at home.

Play re­sumes at 10 am in all match­es, Sun­day.

SCORES:

AT QUEEN’S PARK OVAL: Clarke Road Utd 76 (24.4 overs) (De­journ Charles 21, Yan­ick Ot­t­ley 20, Sunil Nar­ine 7/0) and 16 with­out loss in 12 overs vs Queen’s Park I 268 for 3 de­clared in 52.2 overs (Isa­iah Ra­jah 100 not out, Kirstan Kallicha­ran 64, Camil­lo Carim­bo­cas 57, Kir­win Sir­ju 1/38).

AT IN­VADERS GROUND: Pow­er­gen 490/4 (93 overs) (Evin Lewis 206, Navin Bidi­asee 119, Daniel Williams 85, Mark Deyal 2/96).