All­rounders Navin Bidaisee and Nicholas Ali shared an im­por­tant 74-run part­ner­ship to help Pow­er­gen Sports Club to a 46-run ‘Pe­nal Der­by’ win over Clarke Road Unit­ed in the T&T Crick­et Board/Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TTCB/TKR) T20 Fes­ti­val on Wednes­day evening at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

The win en­abled Pow­er­gen to win Group B of the tour­na­ment and they will face Queen’s Park Crick­et Club (Group A sec­ond place team) in this evening’s semi­fi­nal while Clarke Road will face Group A win­ners, Bess Mo­tor Marchin Pa­tri­ots.

Pow­er­gen chose to bat first found them­selves at 44 for three in the sev­enth over with Daniel Williams (10), Cephas Coop­er (1) and Videsh Sookhai (24) al­ready dis­missed.

Bidaisee and Ali then sta­bilised the in­nings and added 74 runs in sev­en overs. Ali hit 42 from 27 balls with three fours and three six­es, while Bidaisee added 41 from 32 balls with two fours and three six­es as they took Pow­er­gen to a good po­si­tion af­ter a shaky start.

Af­ter their dis­missals at 118-4 (31.1 overs) and 143-5 (15.3 overs), re­spec­tive­ly, cap­tain Akeil Coop­er belt­ed an un­beat­en 38 from 21 balls and was sup­port­ed by Samuel Roop­nar­ine who scored 13 not out as they closed on 190 for 6 in 20 overs.

Clarke Road's in­nings start­ed in a co­nun­drum and they were re­duced to 28 for three with the wick­ets of the dan­ger­ous and re­li­able Nicholas Sookdeosingh (0), Mark Deyal (2) and Sha­trughan Ram­baran (5) all falling to Jon Russ Jages­sar, who had the top or­der in a spin.

Bar­ba­di­an Shi­an Brath­waite, who was named in Bar­ba­dos Pel­i­cans teams in the up­com­ing Crick­et West In­dies/Caribbean Pre­mier League (CWI/CPL) Break­out League, scored 45 and his part­ner­ship with An­to­nio Gomez (24) was in­stru­men­tal as they took them from 28 for three to 97 for four. The cru­cial 69-run part­ner­ship in six overs and one ball put Clarke Road in a po­si­tion that be­lieved they could go on to win.

Af­ter Gomez was bowled by Samuel Roop­nar­ine, the in­nings crum­bled when they lost three wick­ets in two runs.

An­der­son Ma­hase (8) fol­lowed at 112 /5 to give Roop­nar­ine his sec­ond wick­et. Two runs lat­er, Brath­waite was caught by Jages­sar to give Bidaisee his first wick­et. Bidaisee din’t wait long for his sec­ond wick­et as he bowled Tariq Mo­hammed two balls lat­er.

Ali then got in­to the ac­tion with the ball as he re­moved Ker­wyn Sir­ju, bowled for sev­en.

Clevon Kalawan bat­tled back with two fours and a six in his 19 and he seemed to have put life in­to Clarke Road’s flick­er­ing hope. Ali then re­moved the dan­ger­ous Kalawan who was caught by De­journ Charles on the long off bound­ary at 143 for 9, still 47 runs be­hind, and 15 balls in hand.

Ali sealed the win with the fi­nal wick­et and his third, when Samuel Roop­nar­ine caught Shi­va Sankar for three as Clarke Road were bowled out for 144 in 17.5 overs to lose by 46 runs.

Sum­marised scores

POW­ER­GEN 190 /6 (20 overs) (Nicholas Ali 42; Navin Bidaisee 41; Sha­trughan Ram­baran 2-18) vs CLARKE ROAD 144 all out (17.5 overs) (Shi­an Brath­waite 45; Nicholas Ali 3-12; Jon Russ Jages­sar 3-14). Pow­er­gen won by 46 runs.

PRIS­ONS 157 /5 (20 overs) (Bryan Boodram 47 not out; Ka­reem Hamil­ton 44; Justin Man­ick 2-32) vs MER­RY­BOYS 161 /4 (20 overs) (Kevin Ra­mas­ray 75; Bryan Boodram 2-24). Mer­ry­boys won by 6 wick­ets.