Bridgetown, Barbados – Spin bowlers Odean Brown of Jamaica and Sunil Narine of Trinidad & Tobago bowled their teams into the final of WICB’s Caribbean T20 Tournament with excellent performances in Saturday’s semi-finals.
Jamaica spinner Odean Brown. Photo: windiescricket.com/Randy Brooks
Leg-spinner Brown took 2-15 off his four overs as Jamaica beat the Windward Islands by five wickets. Narine took 2-10 off his four overs of superb variations and control as T&T beat arch rivals Barbados by five wickets. Both men took home the Star-of-the-Match awards.
T&T will now meet Jamaica in Sunday’s final at 8 pm (7 pm Jamaica Time). Before that Barbados face the Windwards in the third-place play-off at 4 pm (3 pm Jamaica Time).
Speaking after his heroics Brown outlined that this is Jamaica’s first Caribbean T20 final and a victory would be “special” for the entire country. It would also give them a “treble” – having won the WICB Four-day tournament and WICB Regional Super50 last year.
“All Jamaica is backing this team to win and a victory would be truly something special, something amazing for the team and the entire nation of Jamaica. We are into the final for the first time and we are just focussing on that match. We are keeping the main thing as the main thing at this stage, which is to lift the Caribbean T20 trophy. If we win that would give us all three titles and that would certainly be a great achievement,” said Brown, who impressed with his control, spin and bounce against Windwards.
Narine has grown in confidence since the start of the Caribbean T20 tournament and said the Trinis will fight to the end to defend their title in what he called “the big occasion”.
“We felt we had the semi-final won when we bowled out Barbados to 89. That’s what we will look to do against Jamaica. By applying pressure we can beat Jamaica. We realise they don’t look for many singles, but they like to look for boundary balls and play the big shots. So once we build pressure, the way we did against Barbados, we believe we can restrict them and chase down whatever they make. We have ‘big day’ players who turn up for the big occasion,” said Narine.
TEAMS
JAMAICA
7. David Bernard Jr (Captain)
1. Kenar Lewis
3. Danza Hyatt
4. Marlon Samuels
5. Horace Miller
6. Andre McCarthy
8. Carlton Baugh Jr (Wicket-keeper)
9. Andre Russell
10. Nkrumah Bonner
11. Nikita Miller
12. Krishmar Santokie
13. Shawn Findlay
14. Odean Brown
15. Sheldon Cotterell
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
80. Denesh Ramdin (Captain/Wicket-keeper)
07. Samuel Badree
15. Adrian Barath
46. Darren Bravo
47. Dwayne Bravo
20. Kevon Cooper
51. Rayad Emrit
05. Sherwin Ganga
48. Justin Guillen
03. Jason Mohammed
24. Sunil Narine
55. Kieron Pollard
14. Ravi Rampaul
54. Lendl Simmons