BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Trinidad & Tobago overcame their inspirational captain Daren Ganga being sidelined with a hand injury to be crowned the new Caribbean Twenty20 champions, following a resounding, 36-run victory over Hampshire yesterday.
Ganga was a non-starter, after he suffered a split “webbing” on his left hand during Saturday’s second semi-final against Jamaica.
But the Red Force, as they now call themselves, bowled with discipline to follow-up gutsy batting, and limited Hampshire to 111 for eight, after they set the English Twenty20 champions 148 for victory in the Grand Final at Kensington Oval.
Jason Mohammed was the pick of the T&T bowlers with two wickets for six runs from 2.1 overs, and Kevon Cooper captured two for 15 from 3.5 overs.
This is the second time that T&T can call themselves T20 champions of the Caribbean, following their capture of the 2008 Stanford T20 Cup, which was the forerunner for this West Indies Cricket Board official tournament.
They will be the region’s representative in India later this year, when all the best T20 sides from the leading cricket nations meet for the Champions League Twenty20.
Darren Bravo had led the way for T&T with 41 from 28 balls, which earned him the Man-of-the-Match award, and Lendl Simmons, later named the Most Valuable Player, supported with 31.
But it was left to stand-in captain Denesh Ramdin with an enterprising 33 from 19 balls to beef-up T&T’s total to 147 for seven from their 20 overs, after they seemed to lose their way in the closing stages.
The new-ball pair of Ravi Rampaul and leg-spinner Samuel Badree then gave T&T a desirable start, with a maiden followed by the early wicket of Johannes Myburgh, Hampshire’s most prolific batsman, bowled for a second-ball duck respectively.
T&T never panicked, not even when Vince and Hampshire captain Jimmy Adams comfortably added 38 for the second wicket.
Mohammed was asked to complete Cooper’s second over, when the medium-fast bowler left the field with a dislocated finger, and he made the breakthrough, when he deceived Vince with the flight a delivery and bowled him for 23 with the final ball of the seventh over.
Adrian Barath had dropped Adams off Cooper, but he made up for the miss, when he ran out the Hampshire captain for 16 in the ninth over to leave the needing another 106 from 70 balls.
T&T continued to take wickets at regular intervals, and this never allowed the remaining Hampshire batsmen to build any momentum to seriously challenge the target – with Benny Howell making the top score of 28 not out.