Un­beat­en Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force romped to their 14th Su­per50 ti­tle on Sat­ur­day night when they whipped Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes by sev­en wick­ets un­der Duck­worth-Lewis-Stern in a lop­sided fi­nal at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba.

In a match re­duced to 43 overs per side fol­low­ing two breaks for rain, Red Force rout­ed Hur­ri­canes for 135 in the 42nd over, with fast bowler Ter­rance Hinds (3-16) and vet­er­an off-spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine (3-17) spear­head­ing the at­tack.

Jah­mar Hamil­ton top-scored with a valiant 62 off 102 de­liv­er­ies but num­ber eight Hay­den Walsh (20) was the on­ly oth­er bats­man to show any en­ter­prise.

Asked to chase a re­vised tar­get of 138, cap­tain Dar­ren Bra­vo struck 40 off 35 de­liv­er­ies to end as the tour­na­ment-lead­ing scor­er with 416 runs at an av­er­age of 83, while left-han­der Nicholas Pooran fin­ished off the game in style with a sen­sa­tion­al 20-ball un­beat­en 39, as Red Force clinched vic­to­ry in the 24th over.

“We al­ways knew that if we con­trolled the pow­er-play, the qual­i­ty of our spin­ners com­ing in­to the back end of the in­nings was go­ing to be a threat for them,” said Bra­vo, who was fea­tur­ing in his 200th List A game.

“Our fast bowlers [al­so] came on re­al­ly nice­ly at the end of this tour­na­ment.”

Hur­ri­canes cap­tain Alzarri Joseph lament­ed his side’s un­der-par ef­fort with the bat.

“It’s clear – we didn’t score enough runs. In a 50-over game and you on­ly score 135, it’s not go­ing to win you the game,” the West In­dies fast bowler said.

“I think all in all, we had a good tour­na­ment. We just have to go back to the draw­ing board for next sea­son.”

Hur­ri­canes found them­selves im­mersed in strife from the out­set, left-han­der Kier­an Pow­ell bowled by fast bowler Shan­non Gabriel for eight in the fourth over with on­ly 11 runs on the board.

They suf­fered an even greater set­back at the start of the sev­enth over when their lead­ing scor­er Justin Greaves re­tired hurt on 11, and Nar­ine then trig­gered a slide, strik­ing twice as three wick­ets tum­bled for three runs in the space of 17 de­liv­er­ies.

Kea­cy Car­ty nicked Hinds be­hind for 12 in the 13th over, Ter­rance Warde played down the wrong line to his third de­liv­ery and was lbw to Nar­ine in the next over with­out scor­ing, be­fore Rah­keem Corn­wall played back to his fifth ball and plumb lbw for one in the 16th from Nar­ine.

Tot­ter­ing on 43 for four, Hur­ri­canes were once again res­cued by Hamil­ton, the right-han­der punch­ing three fours and a six in a con­trolled in­nings, in a valiant at­tempt to hold his side to­geth­er.

He put on 27 for the fifth wick­et with Kofi James (7) and a fur­ther 46 for the sixth with Walsh be­fore a swift col­lapse saw the last five wick­ets crash for on­ly 19 runs.

Walsh faced 38 balls and struck two fours be­fore pro­vid­ing wick­et­keep­er Pooran with a low catch off Hinds in the 36th over, while Joseph (2) per­ished at the end of the next over, miss­ing a for­ward de­fen­sive prod and falling lbw to Nar­ine who fin­ished as the joint lead­ing wick­et-tak­er with 20 scalps.

Greaves (12) re­turned to the crease but last­ed on­ly an­oth­er two de­liv­er­ies be­fore top-edg­ing left-arm spin­ner Akeal Ho­sein to short third man and Hamil­ton fi­nal­ly per­ished in the 41st, de­ceived by a slow­er ball from Hinds and watch­ing as Khary Pierre held a stun­ner in the deep.

“Gen­uine­ly I don’t think I could ask for a bet­ter end­ing,” said Man-of-the-Match Nar­ine, who was play­ing his fi­nal do­mes­tic 50-over game.

“The way the boys played the en­tire sea­son and tru­ly dom­i­nat­ed the last two games, gen­uine­ly I couldn’t ask for more.”

Faced with a straight­for­ward run chase, Joshua Da Sil­va struck a run-a-ball 28 in a 45-run open­ing stand with Kjorn Ot­t­ley (23) who then put on a fur­ther 39 for the sec­ond wick­et with Bra­vo, as Red Force flour­ished.

Leg-spin­ner Walsh bowled Ot­t­ley in the 17th over and then went through Bra­vo’s de­fence with a goo­gly to rat­tle the stumps in the 21st over af­ter the left-han­der had punched three fours and two six­es.

Pooran then took mat­ters in­to his own hands, blast­ing a four and four six­es in a 30-run, un­bro­ken fourth-wick­et part­ner­ship with Ja­son Mo­hammed (five not out) to fin­ish the game quick­ly.

CMC

Scores:

HUR­RI­CANES 135 off 41.5 overs (Jah­mar Hamil­ton 62, Hay­den Walsh 20; Ter­rance Hinds 3-16, Sunil Nar­ine 3-17) vs RED FORCE 141 for three off 23.4 overs (Dar­ren Bra­vo 40, Nicholas Pooran 39 not out, Kjorn Ot­t­ley 23, Joshua Da Sil­va 28; Hay­den Walsh 2-19).

Red Force won by sev­en wick­et