Demerara and Berbice will play the final today of the Guyana Cricket Board/Dave West Indian Exports Guy-NY Inter-County Under-15 50-over tournament at the Georgetown Cricket Club, Bourda.
Both teams secured victories in their final round matches on Thursday to make sure they play in what will be an intriguing match-up with Demerara having already defeated Berbice in the earlier rounds.
In Demerara’s final round match against GCB President’s XI, they rocked to a commanding nine wicket win due to man-of-the match bowling performance by seamer Jason Payne who copped 5-19.
Payne’s heroics helped to bowl out the President XI for a meager 36 in 12 overs as Orin Gibson’s eight runs was the highest score in an abysmal batting performance; Daniel Paul supported Payne’s cause with 3-14.
When Demerara took strike openers Yeudistir Persaud and Andrew Samaroo (03) added 27 for the opening stand before Samaroo fell to Abdul Ramsammy.
Persaud batted positively in his unbeaten 25 (4x4s) as he finished on 37-1 in eight overs, Shoaib Shaw was unbeaten on 05 as Ramsammy took 1-4.
At Enterprise, Berbice defeated Essequibo by three wickets; Essequibo batted first and scored 112 all out in 43.3 overs while Berbice in response made 116-7 in 17.2 overs.
The pair of Lance Roberts (34) and Mark Federicks (13) repaired the damage with a handy 49-run sixth wicket partnership after the five wickets fell for just four runs.
Ameer Singh with 23 added some lower-order support as the wickets were shared amongst the Berbice bowlers.
Nigel Deodat snared 3-20; Jevon Shultz took 2-4 and Aaron Beharry 2-26.
Berbice response was led by Shultz with a top score of 17; he got support from Fawaz Gafoor (16) and Seon Glasgow (11). Off-spinner Amos Sarwan took 4-39.
Today, Demerara will look to the likes of in-form opener Sachin Singh to lead with the bat and will certainly be expecting another good bowling performance from Payne.
Berbice on the other hand will be looking want to equal the score with a victory in the most important match and handy all-rounder Jevon Shultz will be key man, along with Glasgow.
