By Jerry Persaud
Former Guyana under-19 cricketer Safraz Ali of Enmore Cricket Club is once again dominating the EACA 40 overs competition. Last Sunday against Phantoms at Heckshter State Park, he allowed the youngster on his team to bat in front of him and came in at number 6 after his team had 3 un-necessary run outs and 20 overs has passed, with the score at 122 for 4 he went about building his innings with skipper Asif Ali and they put on 113 runs partnership with Asif contribution been 19 runs. After he reached his 50 he set Heckshter State Park alight with some classical drives and ended up with 100 not out and as Phantom skipper put it, a “Golden Hundred.”
Prolific Safraz Ali average 126.66 with a tally of 380 runs. Photo: John Aaron.
Safraz Ali has scored three consecutive centuries, two in the last two games he played last year and the other in the first game against Atlantis this year. He then went on to score two more this year. All of the three centuries he scored this year were not out. In the six matched he played so far he has a total of 380 runs with an average of 126.66 runs per innings.
I had the pleasure of batting with him when he score one of his century and congratulated him on the others and he recently said to me that he will missed two games because of the trip he is taking with the Friends of Former Guyana Cricketers to Guyana and the way he is batting he could probably make 1000 runs this year in the EACA.
At the end of the 40 overs Enmore was 271 for 6, other contributors were Chaman Ramdial 26, Rajendra Harripersaud 23, Asif Ali and Kumar Dindial 19 each and Shivraj Jainarine 17. Paul Charran was left not out on 10 and he saw Safraz to his hundred.
Bowling for Phantoms Asif. Atif and Kamal picked up one wicket each with Asif been the most economical 8-2-24-1 including 10 wides.
Phantoms in reply were bowled out for 204 in 39.1 overs, with Vignes scoring 46, Kamal 31, Khalid 32 and Atif 25. Skipper Asif Ali decided to try some of his bowlers that didn’t bowled a ball in any of the previous matches and they did not let him down. Bowling is one of Enmore biggest concern right now.
Clevon Heerah was the pick of them with 4 for 30 and Rajendra Harripersaud father of Enmore youngest cricketer Nicholas Harripersaud 2 for 16. Shivraj Jainarine also took 2 for 34 and took one of the best caught and bowled that I have ever seen.
Nicholas Harripersaud, Enmore’s talented 13 year old off spinner picked up 1 for 41 and was very unfortunate not to have gotten more wickets as 3 dropped catches were floored off his bowling (it’s a joy to watched him bowled and how he reacted when catches are dropped off his bowling). Nicholas who had migrated with his father recently is a very pint size off spinner and has a batting stance as his idol and friend Shivnarine Chanderpaul with whom he played cricked with at Enmore. Nicholas has so far bagged the scalps of the inform Debo Sankar, Karen Ganesh, Amjad Khan and Sabeeh Rafiq.
