KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent—Trinidad and To­ba­go Women pulled off a ma­jor up­set by de­feat­ing de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Ja­maica Women by five wick­ets in a close en­counter in the Women’s T20 Blaze on Sat­ur­day.

Ja­maica Women pro­duced a lack­lus­tre ef­fort with the bat, on­ly man­ag­ing to get up to 65-9 in their 20 overs af­ter choos­ing to bat first at the Arnos Vale Play­ing Field.

T&T Women then made a meal of their run chase be­fore even­tu­al­ly emerg­ing vic­to­ri­ous on 66 for five with four balls re­main­ing in the match.

The re­sult cat­a­pult­ed T&T to the top of the stand­ings with two wins from two match­es, while leav­ing Ja­maica with the dif­fi­cult task of de­fend­ing their ti­tle.

The writ­ing was on the wall for Ja­maica ear­ly in the con­test af­ter they lost cap­tain Rasha­da Williams, Chedean Na­tion and Abi­gail Bryce with just nine runs on the board.

Their strug­gles were fur­ther ev­i­dent as they limped to 20 for three at the halfway stage.

Left-arm spin­ner Steffie Soogrim helped to suf­fo­cate Ja­maica, grab­bing four wick­ets for just two runs from her four overs.

Chinelle Hen­ry (18) and Keneisha Fer­ron, who made 16, were the on­ly two bat­ters to score in dou­ble dig­its and were main­ly re­spon­si­ble for get­ting them up to their even­tu­al to­tal.

T&T found them­selves in sim­i­lar trou­ble at the start of their run chase, slump­ing to 11 for three ear­ly on.

But Brit­ney Coop­er scored an un­beat­en 30 and, along with Anisa Mo­hammed, who made a cru­cial 18, steered the side to vic­to­ry.

Latch­man bowls Guyana Women to vic­to­ry

KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent—Nyia Latch­man de­liv­ered a dev­as­tat­ing spell of leg spin bowl­ing that crip­pled Wind­ward Is­lands Women and set up a straight­for­ward vic­to­ry for Guyana Women in the Women’s T20 Blaze here at the Arnos Vale Play­ing Field, yes­ter­day.

Latch­man tore through the Wind­ward Is­lands’ low­er or­der, grab­bing 4-8 from her two overs to lim­it them to 61 for nine in a con­test that was re­duced to 13 overs due to per­sis­tent show­ers.

Need­ing 65 to win due to the Duck­worth/Lewis/Stern method, Guyana eased to 65 for three off 12 overs.

There was noth­ing to sug­gest the Wind­ward Is­lands Women would be dis­missed so cheap­ly when open­ers Ner­is­sa Crafton and Japhi­na Joseph were busy adding 29 runs for the first wick­et.

How­ev­er, Shene­ta Grim­mond bowled Crafton and Jan­nil­lea Glas­gow for 14 and one, re­spec­tive­ly, to leave the score 33 for two.

But from a score of 46 for two, the Wind­ward Is­lands shock­ing­ly lost their last eight wick­ets for 15 runs, thanks main­ly in part to Latch­man.

Joseph was need­less­ly run out for 17, be­fore Ash­mi­ni Mu­nis­ar snared the wick­ets of Afy Fletch­er and Ash­lene Ed­ward in the space of three balls, to see the Wind­ward Is­lands slip to 51 for five.

Latch­man then ac­count­ed for the wick­ets of Ear­nisha Fontaine, Care­na Noel, Zai­da James and Niesha Cher­ry for the ad­di­tion of just 10 runs to wrap up the in­nings.

Realean­na Grim­mond (30) and Shabi­ka Gajn­abi, who scored an un­beat­en 26, then steered their side to vic­to­ry in a 54-run part­ner­ship for the sec­ond wick­et.

And even though Guyana lost Grim­mond and cap­tain She­maine Camp­belle in quick suc­ces­sion, the re­sult was nev­er in doubt as they reached their tar­get with an over to spare.