Jamaica: Riahs complete St. James double (3 August 1999)

3 August 1999

Jamaica: Riahs complete St. James double

Paul A Reid

Western Bureau - Riahs Sports Club completed the double in St. James cricket yesterday, beating Granville Sports Club by 78 runs in the finals of the Hart Cup competition at Barnett Oval.

Riahs, who had earlier won the Junior Cup competition, made 161 after being sent in then bowled out Granville for 83 in a game dominated by bowlers.

The winners pocketed $70,000 while the runners up went home with $30,000 for their efforts.

Spinner Paul Murray bagged five wickets and Chester Sterling four for Riahs to overshadow an outstanding return of six for 38 by Vickas Burchell of Granville.

The game had been scheduled for last weekend but was called off because of rain with Riahs well set at 216 for three.

Yesterday the Granville bowlers seemed to have learned from their mistakes and restricted Riahs to 161 off 37 of the allowed 40 overs with Burchell getting his haul off 11.1 overs. Rohan Clarke, Keron Davis and Joseph Marshall all got one wicket each.

Tedroy Brom-field top-scored for Riahs with 30, Sheral James got 24, Dwayne Dixon 21 and Rylan Scott 14 while there were 29 extras.

After losing opener Michael Erskine with the very first ball of the inning, Granville staged a good recovery with Chris Miller - 36 and Grantley Miller - 14 putting on 52 for the second wicket. The Riahs fielders contributed to the big partnership with a number of uncharacteristic lapses in the field.

The Riahs bowlers then snatched four quick wickets in the space of seven runs, including the prized wickets of Chris Miller and Malden Miller who failed to capitalise on a chance before he was off the mark, being trapped leg before wicket for two.

The remainder of the batting collapsed in the face of tight bowling from Murray and Sterling with only one other batsman, Norman Stewart with 11, getting into double figures.

Murray finished with five for 31 off 10.5 overs, Sterling took four for 13 off six while Mervin Armstrong took the other wicket to fall.

Source :: The Jamaica Gleaner (https://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/)