Pow­er­gen Pe­nal Crick­et Club sped to its sec­ond win in as many match­es in the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB)/Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) T20 Fes­ti­val with a 46-run win over Mer­ry­boys Sports Club at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain on Sun­day (March 9).

The Pe­nal gi­ants did not seem to be miss­ing Cephas Coop­er and Ja­son Mo­hammed, who are both out on Red Force du­ty in the on­go­ing Crick­et West In­dies Cham­pi­onships, as they got to 217 for sev­en af­ter de­cid­ing to take first strike on a hard pitch with some green grass on the sur­face.

They start­ed with a brisk 46-run first-wick­et part­ner­ship be­tween Vikash Sookhai and Daniel Williams that last­ed on­ly four overs.

Sookhai struck three fours and a soli­tary six in his 19 be­fore he was the first dis­missed, bril­liant­ly caught by Ron­dell Ram­lo­gan, who com­plet­ed a run­ning catch with a sec­ond at­tempt af­ter the ball ini­tial­ly bub­bled out of his hands.

Williams, who just missed out on Red Force du­ty to Clarke Road Unit­ed’s An­to­nio Gomez when both wick­et­keep­ers cap­tain Joshua Da Sil­va and Amir Jan­goo were in Pak­istan with West In­dies in Jan­u­ary, scored an ag­gres­sive 52 from just 24 balls that in­clud­ed nine fours and two six­es in a dis­play of prop­er crick­et shots and still main­tained a strike rate of 216.

Williams was out leg-be­fore to Ja­cen Agard. The for­mer Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do cap­tain mis­siled the white sphere in the left-han­der’s pads from around the wick­et in the sev­enth over with the score on 79.

Navin Bidaisee, who was on six at the fall of Williams, was joined by skip­per Adri­an Coop­er but the part­ner­ship pro­duced just 18 runs and end­ed with the wick­et of Coop­er who was caught by Ab­dul-Ra­heem Top­pin from a Saurav Wor­rell de­liv­ery for sev­en.

De­journ Charles then joined Bidaisee and to­geth­er they went on an 89-run part­ner­ship in sev­en overs and four balls.

Bidaisee and Charles were mix­ing ag­gres­sive pow­er-hit­ting with classy crick­et shots as they pushed Pow­er­gen from 97 for three to 186 for four. It end­ed when Bidaisee edged Justin Man­ick to wick­et­keep­er Ger­ard Chin for 51 from 35 balls with two fours and three six­es. Five balls and two runs lat­er, Man­ick in­duced an­oth­er edge, this time from Nicholas Ali and again Chin made no mis­take be­hind the three sticks for his sec­ond catch of the in­nings.

The last two overs of the in­nings, al­lowed Pow­er­gen to move from 188 to 216 for sev­en and al­so gave Charles time to move from 48 to 62 not out and set Mer­ry­boys a chal­leng­ing tar­get of 217.

Kevin Ra­mas­ry and Chin gave the Diego Mar­tin-based team a slow but steady start of 40 in six overs and four balls that end­ed when Charles had Ra­mas­ry caught by wick­et­keep­er Daniel Williams for 11.

Chin hit ex­pe­ri­enced fast bowler Uth­man Muham­mad for four through the cov­ers and the fast bowler re­spond­ed with some bounc­ers and short balls. But the 21-year-old did not shy away, but in­stead up­per cut an­oth­er short ball over slips for four runs to the third-man bound­ary.

How­ev­er, Scy­on Charles forced Chin to edge Williams for 22, end­ing an ex­cit­ing and bal­anced pe­ri­od be­tween bat and ball that would make the crick­et purists and neu­trals beam with ex­cite­ment. Three balls lat­er, Sa­hash Shwethan was caught by Nicholas Ali to give Charles his sec­ond wick­et in the over.

Cap­tain An­drew Ram­baran hit a beau­ti­ful four off the first ball he faced and that sparked hope of a Mer­ry­boys come­back. Ram­baran was on the back of some strong per­for­mances for both school and club this sea­son, as he has not scored low­er than 50 for Vish­nu Boys Hin­du Col­lege this year and reg­is­tered 145 for Mer­ry­boys in a League match in Feb­ru­ary.

When he was out at 56 for four in the tenth over, Mer­ry­boys hopes were fad­ing away. Gio­van­ni Le­tren and Justin Man­ick sought to get the match as close as pos­si­ble and their own per­son­al land­marks.

Man­ick reached his land­mark of 50 not out when he got four over mid-wick­et to fin­ish un­beat­en on 50 with five six­es while Le­tren was left strand­ed on 44 not out from 33 balls as Mer­ry­boys reached 171 for 5 to lose by 46 runs.

In the ear­li­er match on Sun­day, Vic­to­ria beat Pris­ons by 11 runs for their first points of the cam­paign.

Sum­marised scores:

VIC­TO­RIA 140 /7 (20 overs) (Riyaad Mo­hammed 33; S Jaya­suriya 33; Bryan Boodram 3-18) vs PRIS­ONS 129 /9 (20 overs) (Jerve Cum­mins 38 not out; Za­ck­ur­rie Ra­goonath 35; Jor­dan Samkaran 3-27; Du­ane Charles 3-30). Vic­to­ria won by 11 runs.

POW­ER­GEN 217 /5 (De­journ Charles 62; Daniel Williams 52; Navid Bidaisee 51; Justin Man­ick 2-33; Ja­cen Agard 2-38) vs MER­RY­BOYS 171/5 (Justin Man­ick 50 not out; Gio­van­ni Le­tren 44 not out; Scy­on Charles 3-36). Pow­er­gen won by 46 runs.