NAGICO-LICA Cricket One Day Tournament
St Kitts-Montserrat Game Abandoned Due to Rain - LICA Third Round Action.
By Rawle Nelson
In Photo seated left to right: NAGICO's Marketing Manager, Jasmine Payne; NAGICO's Managing Director, Mr. Eric Ellis; President of LICA, Mr. Gregory Shillingford and President of the St. Kitts Cricket Association, Mr. Ingleton Liburd.
There was mixed fortunes as action in the LICA NAGC Sponsored One Day Action continued today at four different venues.
At Warner Park, St Kitts and Montserrat square off in what was anticipated to be an interesting match up. However after persistent and heavy rainfall the match was abandoned with not a ball being bowled in St Kitts innings. After early morning showers Montserrat innings was halted with the score at 144-4 after 38 overs.
This meant that under the Duckworth /Lewis system St Kitts would be required to make a total of 186 in 38 overs. However, when St Kitts was ready to take to the wicket at around 2:45 pm there were more rain and a further evaluation of the day's game was done with the umpires deciding to further reduce the asking target. St Kitts revised target was 121 runs in 20 overs but at 4:00pm the Montserrat bowlers expressed their concerns in the very soggy outfield and the unplayable situation that they were faced with.
The umpires agreed and the match was officially abandoned with no result being available. This was a major blow to the defending champions, St Kitts attempt at regaining their title as they urgently needed a win in an effort to keep their hopes alive.
The main contributors for Montserrat were Zhuan Sweeney who top scored with a well played 47 runs which included five fours from the sixty nine deliveries that he faced. Sherlyl Burns for his 33 runs hit as similar amount of fours from fifty two deliveries and Mc Pherson Meade contributed 23 not out from forty five deliveries that he faced.
Bowling for St Kitts, Christanjah Carey who debuted for St Kitts performed very well in his first match as he picked up one for 15 from eight overs while he had good support from Steve Liburd and Calvin Williams who bagged one wicket each for 18 and 23 runs from six and seven overs respectively.
"We still have a further four more rounds remaining and hopefully we will be able to do well thus propelling us into the semi finals," an official of the St Kitts Cricket Association said.
The official noted that while the competition can be regarded as intense he is confident that the local team will do well. "We were beaten severely by the Antiguans but I can tell you this much that if we face them (Antigua) again the results will be totally different as we have learnt from the mistakes that we made inn that game," he noted.
Both St Kitts and Montserrat will be looking to redeem themselves today. St Kitts tackle BVI at the Conaree ground while Montserrat plays Anguilla at the Molyneaux ground.