An impressive spell of swing bowling from Barbados and West Indies left-arm fast bowler Pedro Collins, piloted Barbados to a comfortable eight-wicket victory over the West Indies Under-19 team in their KFC Regional Limited overs match at the Blairmont Community Centre ground yesterday.
Choosing to bat first on a wicket that would probably have deteriorated later in the day had the game gone that long, the WI youth team, who were bowled out for a miserable 18, found themselves in an early spot of bother when Fidel Edwards, the brother of Collins, bowled opener Kieron Powell for one as the batsman lazily played over a low swinging full toss with the first ball of his spell.
From there onwards, the Bajans, who are hunting regional limited overs glory, never looked back as they constantly took wickets against a team that was bewildered by the swing of Collins and the raw pace of Edwards.
Collins took 7-11 from 7.3 overs of swing and pace to become the new record holder in regional limited overs cricket, eclipsing the previous record of 7-15 held by Hamish Anthony of the Leeward Islands, who took his haul against Barbados in 1995.
He began his record haul when he had Rashidi Boucher caught by wicket-keeper Patrick Browne low down to his right as he edged a ball that swung across his body.
He left without scoring and the WI youths were precariously placed on 1-2 which soon became 4-5 as they failed to negotiate the swinging balls from Collins who was getting the ball to move both ways off the wicket.
Darren Bravo, younger brother of Trinidad and West Indies all rounder Dwayne Bravo, would have loved to take a page out of his brother’s book during his innings on Tuesday for Trinidad and Tobago against the Combined Colleges, but Collins had other ideas and he induced the youngster to edge a swinging ball straight to Wayne Blackman at second slip before he had scored.
Collins then removed captain Steven Jacobs with an in-swinger that struck the batsman on the pad as he stretched forward tentatively.
A 10-run partnership, the highest of the innings between Andre Creary, who made two, and Shamarh Brooks, who top scored with seven, looked like restoring some sort of order to the innings until Creary got a ball from Collins that he could not control, drove loosely, and simply edged it to Browne.
Brooks was then caught by Jonathan Carter at gully as he too played loosely to a delivery from Dwayne Smith who had replaced Edwards from the Southern end of the ground with the score reading 15-7 in the 12th over.
It was all over bar the shouting for the Youth team two overs later as Collins again got a double strike in what was his eight-over of his non-stop spell as the opposition fell for what was eventually the lowest score in regional limited overs cricket, 30 runs less than what Bermuda made against the Windward Islands in Jamaica in 1999.
Edwards and Smith supported Collins well with 2-4 and 1-3 respectively as skipper Corey Collymore used only three bowlers in the face of the inept batting display put on by the West Indies youth team. Barbados suffered two hiccups chasing the paltry victory target of 19 as the young, Jamaican fast bowler Jason Dawes, grabbed 2-7 from three overs.
Dawes removed Ryan Nurse, who drove loosely at a ball outside his off-stump but only succeeded in getting a thin edge through to wicket keeper, Devon Thomas, and then got Dale Richards via the lbw route as the batsman was beaten for pace.
There were no other alarms for the Bajans who ended on 22-2 from 5.5 overs.
In an invited comment on his record-breaking achievement, the 31-year old Collins, who will begin his next game looking for a hat-trick told Stabroek Sport that the hard work he and the team went through was beginning to pay off.
“Leading up to this tournament, I did some hard work both on my fitness and bowling and today’s efforts reflect the reward. We had a game plan to get the opposition out quickly, a plan I stuck to well,” Collins said.
When told about his record-breaking achievement, the ever-smiling Collins told this reporter that he never set out to break the record but rather to stick to the game plan of getting the opposition out as quickly as possible which however, resulted in the record.
