Johnson praises bowlers, centurions for inspiring win
Guyana Harpy Eagles captain, Leon Johnson has showered his bowlers and the century makers following their thirdround win over the top-of-the-table Barbados Pride in the ongoing West Indies Championship.
The Eagles defeated the Pride by five wickets after posting 490 in their first innings and bowling out the Pride for 266 and 291 (following on) which had set Eagles just 68 for victory. The Eagles’ first innings was led by centuries from Tagenarine Chanderpaul and Gudakesh Motie, who struck his maiden ton.
After the match, Johnson explained, “Coming in to today, the match could have gone anywhere, Barbados has a very good batting order, 90 overs, I thought we did excellent with the ball today, all the bowlers really gave a good effort, especially Keemo Paul who bowled the last spell before tea and brought us back into the game.”
Paul ended with a match haul of 6-133 while Veerasammy Permaul bagged five wickets. Motie also took four scalps.
“We had good plans this morning, it was just about remaining patient, a fourthday pitch is never going to be easy to score freely on but we knew once we put the ball in the good areas we are always in with a chance,” Johnson said on the plans to negotiate the Pride’s batting on the final day. 3rd, and 4th, and will feature eight teams. They are Linden, Beacons, Wales, Club 45, Santos, Pele, Thomas United and the Guyana Defence Force.
Trophies and cash incentives will be up for grabs. Further details on the tournament will be announced shortly.
Eagles’ small chase saw them losing five wickets with a change in the batting order and the captain said, “We knew it was always going to be challenging, they were never going to make it easy for us to get those 67 runs but it was good to get those runs and move up the table.”
Johnson revealed that the plan was “just to bat to the final over, I think we lost a few cheap wickets there, in some situations where we probably didn’t need to go for those big shots, having said that Tage [Tagenarine Chanderpaul] came in and he played very well.”
“I told him let us take it to the last three overs, we took it to the last two overs actually and Jordan was bowling pretty well, so I said back yourself, pick the areas you want to hit in the field and he did well in that penultimate over,” he recalled.
Johnson reckoned that with those kinds of totals it would be hard to lose and was happy to see Chanderpaul coming and getting his third century and showing his class after being “under the pump a little bit.”
The Pride remain at the top of the table with 45 points while Leeward Islands Hurricanes are in the second spot with 43.6 points. The Trinidad and Tobago Red
Force ended the round on 41.6 points while the Eagles moved to 39.4 points. The Jamaica Scorpions lifted themselves from the bottom of the table to fifth with 26.8 points and Windward Islands Volcanoes slipped to last place with 13.8 points.