South stay classic champions

SOUTH captain Daren Ganga emerged the star of the show yesterday as his team retained the Pizza Hut/Gerry Gomez cricket classic crown when rain again intervened to prevent an outright result at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. The match was called off by umpires Perry Galindo and Rawle Richards at 1.30 pm after only 56 minutes play was possible with North in dire straits chasing 211 to win on the last day. Resuming on their overnight score on 11 for two wickets opener Mario Belcon added just four more runs to his account before being comprehensively bowled by Brent Harriot for 11.

North captain Dwayne Bravo emerged to join Aneil Kanhai and the pair took the score to 39 obviously intent on taking the attack to the South bowlers. However, with dark clouds ominously approaching Kanhai had a rush of blood and took a wild swing at spinner Dave Mohammed, lofting the ball high to backward square leg where Harriot took a well-judged catch. The rains came moments after and never let up sufficiently to allow any play again extending South’s hold on the emblem of cricket supremacy between the rivals. Ganga, who scored a brilliant 107 on Saturday to put his team in the driver’s seat to force an outright victory was voted “Man-of-Match” by the adjudicators Giles Antoine and Gregory Asgarali, the respective managers for the South and North teams.

Ganga said yesterday he felt pleased his side had won the Pizza Hut/Gerry Gomez Classic but would have preferred an outright victory to put the issue beyond any doubt. And he chided his team’s batsmen for not applying themselves on what he described as a “difficult wicket” on which only one other batsman — North captain Dwayne Bravo — scored more than 50. “But there are several positives that came out of the match and I am certain the players will learn from their mistakes and improve as we get into the new cricket season,’ said Ganga.

Of his own batting Ganga said he assessed the situation quite well on Saturday which allowed him to play with confidence and dominate the North bowling which set him apart from the other batsmen. Ganga confessed that he had exorcised the demons which affected his mental game after scoring back to back Test centuries against Australia last year in the Caribbean. And he is looking foward to continuing his rich form well into the next cricket season.