Barbados put on a shoddy batting display, but were still able to record a comfortable 58-run win over the Sagicor High Performance Centre (HPC) in a Twenty20 practice match at the 3Ws Oval yesterday.
Captain Dwayne Smith’s knock of 51 off 45 balls was the lone highlight in an otherwise disappointing total of 132 for nine which contained three run outs.
They were much better with the ball, though, and led by a three-wicket haul from left-arm spinner Ryan Hinds, bundled out the HPC for just 74 runs with three balls remaining.
Barbados used 13 players in rotation in the first of what is expected to be several practice matches before the start of the 2013 Caribbean Twenty20 competition.
After an opening stand of 63 in seven overs between Smith and Rashidi Boucher, Barbados suffered a dramatic middle-order collapse – seven wickets falling for 27 runs.
Boucher’s dismissal for 19 began the slide when he was superbly run out by a direct hit from fine leg by Johnson Charles.
A tight spell of bowling in tandem between leg-spinner Yannic Cariah and fast bowler Miguel Cummins saw Barbados add just six more runs in the next four overs as Smith and new batsman Shane Dowrich struggled to find the gaps.
Dowrich perished soon after, stumped by wicketkeeper Jahmar Hamilton off the bowling of Cariah for five, and Jonathan Carter followed him back to the pavilion three balls later, caught on the midwicket boundary for a duck, as the score slipped to 78 for three.
A straight boundary carried Smith to 48 and the score to 91 for three, and he brought up his half-century the very next ball when he collected two runs from a slog sweep over midwicket.
But he would lose Alcindo Holder via the run out route after a mixup between the two batsmen, before Smith lost his leg stump to Jomel Warrican to leave Barbados stuttering at 95 for five in the 15th over. His knock contained five boundaries.
By the 17th over they had collapsed to 105 for nine after Shamarh Brooks, Ryan Hinds, Jamar Griffith and Christopher Jordan lost their wickets cheaply.
It took an unbeaten last-wicket stand of 27 between Javon Searles, who scored 16 including two sixes off the final two balls of the innings, and Ashley Nurse, 12 to salvage respectability.
