Despite a century from captain Jason Mohammed, West Indies A lost their first warm up match ahead of their tri-series in England at the hands of Warwickshire yesterday at Birmingham.
The Caribbean side won the toss and reluctantly decided to send Warwickshire into bat. Warwickshire scored above seven runs an over to post 385-6 from their 50 overs while West Indies A only managed 254 all out in 40.3 overs.
The visitors found it difficult to get breakthroughs as 22-year-old skipper, Dominic Sibley, solidified the top order of the English team with two half century partnerships and a third wicket stand of 138 with Ed Pollock, Andrew Umeed and Will Rhodes respectively.
Pollock blazed the bowling early before he fell for a 24-ball 47 edging to Devon Thomas behind the stump with the score at 72 while Umeed contributed 28 to the even 50-run partnership with his captain.
Rhodes and Sibley however, accelerated in the back half of the innings with Rhodes chalking up 69 from 58 balls including three sixes.
Sibley found a partner to rotate the strike regularly and allowed Rhodes to bring up his maiden List A century, a brisk 115 consisting of 10 fours and four sixes.
Dominc Drakes and Oshane Thomas picked up two wickets each with Keemo Paul going wicket-less in his 10 overs that went for 66 runs. Chanderpaul Hemraj also turned his hand over in a three-over spell.
Rahkeem Cornwall capitalized on a blunder by Sibley to remove him in the 36th over but Warwickshire’s bottom order produced cameos to propel them to a difficult score for any team chasing.
In reply, Chandrapaul Hemraj was watchful in the first over before brutalizing Oliver Hannon-Dalby for 14 runs in the second over of the match. However, Hemraj became too excited and picked out Josh Poysden on the boundary in the final ball of the over for 17.
Mohammed batted patiently but was running out of partners after losing Jermaine Blackwood and Sunil Ambris in quick succession but the lower order tried a resistance with Devon Thomas and Rovman Powell scoring 30 and 28 respectively.
In the end Mohammed was the only batsman from the Caribbean who seemed to negotiate the track well, scoring a 93-ball 102 of which he stroked nine fours and five sixes.
Daniel Douthwaite, Hannon-Dalby and Alex Thompson all picked up three wickets.
