BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Rookies Mikyle Louis and Joshua Bishop topped the aggregates during the West Indies Championship which concluded last weekend.
The right-handed Louis, in his first maiden first class season, piled up 682 runs to head the batting charts, averaging 48.71 while gathering three hundreds and four fifties for Leeward Islands Hurricanes.
He came to prominence in the second round when he carved out hundreds in both innings against Guyana Harpy Eagles at Warner Park, before going on to reach triple figures again in the final round against Windward Islands Volcanoes last week.
The 23-year-old had previously played a handful of matches in the Regional Super50 seven years ago when he turned out for West Indies Under-19s.
Left-arm spinner Bishop, who featured in that same West Indies Under-19 side alongside Louis, was the leading wicket-taker with 42 scalps at a miserly 20.07 runs apiece in this year’s championship.
The 23-year-old, playing in the colours of West Indies Academy, shone with a Man-of-the-Match 10-wicket haul in the fourth round against Jamaica Scorpions even though his side suffered defeat in Kingston. Bishop, in only his second first class season, also proved handy with the bat scoring 251 runs in the lower order, including a half-century.
He was subsequently named in a 15-man West Indies-A side to tour Nepal for five Twenty20s starting Saturday.
Meanwhile, Test captain Kraigg Brathwaite (565), Guyana Harpy Eagles all-rounder Kevin Sinclair (508) and Trinidad and Tobago Red Force’s Amir Jango (500) were the other batsmen to reach the 500-run landmark.
The left-handed Jangoo struck the season’s only double hundred with a splendid 218 against Combined Campuses and Colleges at the Frank Worrell Memorial Ground in the penultimate round.
West Indies white-ball batsmen Keacy Carty (495) and Harpy Eagles captain Tevin Imlach (485) flirted with the 500-run mark.
Not for the first time, spinners dominated the wicket-taking chart as left-arm spinners Jomel Warrican (35) and Ashmead Nedd (33), along with off-spinners Rahkeem Cornwall (32) and Bryan Charles (31), rounded out the top five.
The leading seamer was Hurricanes’ Jeremiah Louis with 30 wickets at almost 20 runs apiece.
