Jamaica thrash Barbados to pull away from the pack

Jamaica stretched their lead at the top to 24 points after Nikita Miller and David Bernard helped them to a 242-run win over Barbados in Bridgetown. Barbados started the final day on 107 for 2, needing 408 more to win or ,more realistically, to bat out the day for a draw. The overnight batsmen, Dale Richards and Kirk Edwards, had started to drag Barbados towards safety with a 110-run stand when Richards was bowled by Miller half an hour before lunch for 117.

There was some more resistance from Barbados, with Edwards and Dwayne Smith adding 33 quick runs before Edwards was run out. Bernard and Miller then ran through the Barbados batting, the last six wickets falling for 30 runs. Miller was adjudged Man-of-the-Match after finishing with 9 for 88 in the game and making a career-best 86 in the second innings. The victory helped Jamica complete the double over Barbados, whom they had beaten by six wickets in Kingston.

There was more good news for Jamaica when second-placed Windward Islands crumbled to a 155-run defeat against Combined Campuses and Colleges in St Vincent. It was CCC's second win of the season and helped lift them off the bottom of the table.

Windwards resumed on 31 for 3 pursuing 301 for victory but collapsed a second time. Fast bowler Kevin McClean did much of the damage for CCC, taking four top-order wickets. Only two batsmen, Rawl Lewis and Shane Shillingford, made more than 20 as Windwards folded for 145. Even that total was reached because of a 47-run ninth-wicket stand between Shillingford and Mervin Matthew.

The other match of the round, between Guyana and Leeward Islands in Albion, predictably ended in a dull draw. Assad Fudadin made 82 to lead Guyana to 341 in the first innings. It was the second match in a row that Fudadin missed out on a maiden first-class century. Legspinner Anthony Martin took four of the five wickets to fall to bowl Guyana out soon after lunch.

The Leewards batsmen piled up 206 for 4 on the back of Runako Morton's 87 before the match was called off. The result takes Leewards to fourth place with 47 points, two ahead of Trinidad who did not play in this round.