West In­dies spin­ners Khary Pierre and Yan­nic Cari­ah shared sev­en wick­ets be­tween them to pro­pel de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Trinidad & To­ba­go Red Force to a 60-run vic­to­ry over Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) Ma­roon­ers in their open­ing match of the CG Unit­ed Su­per50 com­pe­ti­tion on Tues­day (Oc­to­ber 29).

Af­ter los­ing the toss and be­ing sent in to bat at the Sir Frank Wor­rell Memo­r­i­al Ground at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (UWI SPEC), St Au­gus­tine, T&T made just 194 in their 50 overs, with Kjorn Ot­t­ley lead­ing the way at the top of the or­der with a knock of 45.

CCC seemed to be cruis­ing to vic­to­ry at 102 for two at one stage, but Pierre grabbed four wick­ets and leg spin­ner Carah took three, to see them col­lapse to 134 all out.

The Ma­roon­ers looked set to cre­ate the tour­na­ment’s first up­set when top scor­er Shaqkere Par­ris and De­mario Richards were in con­trol fol­low­ing the wick­ets of Kamil Pooran and Kier­an Pow­ell.

But need­ing just 93 more runs for vic­to­ry, CCC shock­ing­ly col­lapsed to lose their last eight wick­ets for just 32 runs.

Khary Pierre took four wick­ets to spin Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force to vic­to­ry over the CCC Ma­roon­ers

Par­ris, the back­bone of the in­nings, bat­ted im­pres­sive­ly and brought up his half cen­tu­ry by pulling Cari­ah over mid­wick­et for six in the 25th over.

But Cari­ah got his re­venge in his next over when Par­ris tried to re­peat the shot but picked out Pierre at deep square leg to be out for 57 from 68 balls, in­clu­sive of five fours and two six­es.

His de­par­ture sparked a col­lapse, and four balls lat­er with just one more run added, Cari­ah bowled Richards as he at­tempt­ed an ex­pan­sive cov­er dri­ve to leave CCC 103 for four.

Ak­shaya Per­saud made just eight be­fore Pierre ac­count­ed for his wick­et and when cap­tain Shamarh Brooks flicked Ja­son Mo­hammed straight to Amir Jan­goo at square leg to be out for 10, CCC were in trou­ble at 121 for six in the 34th over.

There was very lit­tle re­sis­tance from the low­er or­der as the last four wick­ets fell for just 13 runs to give T&T a com­fort­able vic­to­ry in the end.

Pierre end­ed with the im­pres­sive fig­ures of 4-8 from 9.1 overs and Cari­ah had 3-31 from his eight overs.

Ear­li­er, Red Force seemed well poised to post a chal­leng­ing to­tal af­ter open­ers Ot­t­ley and Tion Web­ster, who made 26, along with Amir Jan­goo, who scored 29, had them well po­si­tioned on 113 for one in the 30th over.

But when Ro­mario Greaves dis­missed Ot­t­ley, T&T lost four wick­ets for nine runs to slump to 122 for five.

It took a 68-run part­ner­ship be­tween Jyd Goolie, who made 37 and Cari­ah to res­cue them and get them up to their even­tu­al to­tal.

Once Cari­ah was run out for 28 with the score 190 for six, Amari Goodridge grabbed three quick wick­ets to quick­ly wrap up the tail and pre­vent T&T from pass­ing the 200-run mark.

CMC

SCORES

RED FORCE 194 in 50 overs (Kjorn Ot­t­ley 45, Jyd Goolie 37, Amir Jan­goo 29, Yan­nic Cari­ah 28, Tion Web­ster 26; Amari Goodridge 3-18, Ak­shaya Per­saud 2-29, Ro­mario Greaves 2-30).

MA­ROON­ERS 134 in 38.1 overs (Shaqkere Par­ris 57, Kamil Pooran 18, Shamarh Brooks 10, Mikkel Govia 10; Khary Pierre 4-8, Yan­nic Cari­ah 3-31).

Trinidad & To­ba­go Red Force won by 60 runs.