Thursday, July 9, 2009

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Cricket squad crushed by the United States By DAHALIA SMITH ~ NG Sports Reporter ~ dahalia@nasguard.com: The Bahamas Cricket Association's (BCA) under-19 national boys team lost by 225 runs against the powerful United States in its opening game at the International Cricket Council's (ICC) 2009 Tournament of Americas in Toronto, Canada, yesterday. The U.S. was first up to bat and totaled 325 runs for the loss of nine wickets in 50 overs. The Bahamas chased its opponents to no avail, posting 75 runs all out in 32 overs. Despite the crushing start, Team Captain Marc Taylor is optimistic about improving on their fifth place finish from the previous tournament. "We will definitely be looking to improve on our previous placement since the last tournament. We were just not experienced enough to capitalize on the other teams when they made mistakes. This time we are looking forward to this tournament and we don't plan to take any prisoners. The Bahamas team has been training from early January this year. Fitness preparation, fielding, bowling and batting were the key areas that we concentrated on. We also played several warm-up matches against senior players where we won one match while the others were very competitive," said Taylor. Expected to play leading roles on the team are Jermaine Adderley, Rudolph Fox and Anwar Sawyer who played in the last Under-19 tournament in 2007. The Tournament of Americas serves as an Under-19 2010 Cricket World Cup (CWC) qualifier. The 2010 Cricket World Cup is set to be held in Kenya. In reference to the Cup, Taylor noted: "It would mean so much to us and our country to be able to do that (qualify)." Canada, the Cayman Islands, the United States and Argentina are playing in the tourney which is expected to wrap up Sunday, July 12 in Toronto, Canada. The team members include Marc Taylor, Jermaine Adderley, Ashmeid Allie, Turan Brown, Adrian Dean, Rudolph Fox, Shridat Jadoo, Julio Jemison, Fritz Stubbs, Anwar Sawyer, Kiran Seeram, Orlando Stuart, Odane Tucker and Tevyn Williams. The team's officials are Paul Thompson, Mohamed Allie, Lester Taylor and Gregory Taylor. In related news, BCA regular season action continued this past weekend. On Saturday, Scotia Paradise defeated the Rising Stars by four wickets and on Sunday, the Dynasty Stars beat Castrol Commonwealth by eight wickets. On Saturday, the Rising Stars batted first and scored 231 runs all out in 35.2 overs. Bowling for Scotia were Mark Butler, who took four wickets, and Andrew Nash and Hamilton Gilliard, who took two wickets apiece. Scotiabank Paradise was second up to bat and ran the Stars down. They amassed 232 runs for the loss of six wickets in 36 overs. Bowling for the Stars was Gary Campbell, who took two wickets. On Sunday, Castrol was first up to bat and lost wickets at an alarming rate. They exhausted all of its wickets (eight) to register a low score of 72 in 18.2 overs. Jonathan Barry took three wickets while teammates Lee Melville and Jeremy Jesubatham took two wickets apiece. When Dynasty batted second, the team had a very low target. They reached and exceeded Castrol's target by one run with the loss of only two wickets in 11.3 overs. Castrol's Sherwin Arthur and Garth Davis both took one wicket apiece in the loss. Jesubatham and Barry registered 28 and 19 runs respectively in the victory. Wednesday, July 8, 2009