ANTONIO ACES ARUN IN ST. ANTHONY’S WIN

In any sport, experience is a vital tool if you expect to be victorious. On March 11^th, 2016, a seasoned St. Anthony’s College cricket team showed their younger East Mucurapo Secondary counterparts just how valuable a commodity it would be in a hard-fought PowerGen SSCL North Zone U-16 division game at the home of the West Moorings ‘Tigers’. There was talent aplenty on display from both teams but in the end, the combined skills and experience of Antonio Lochan and his lieutenants would see off the challenge of the Mucurapo Road outfit.

St. Anthony’s won the toss and skipper Lochan took the opportunity to put his team on the front foot by batting first. Striding out to the wicket in the hot afternoon sunshine together with G. Romany, the St. Anthony’s captain must have envisioned a big total by the end of their allotted overs. Instead, he would see his team stuttering by the end of the 7^th over as the determined young ‘Compre’ team brought their A-game to the party. First Romany was run out by a good bit of glovework from keeper J. Batson and then J. Hernandez and D. Ramdhanie would fall in quick succession to have the ‘Tigers’ tied down at 31-3. Mucurapo captain Kareem Constantine, as expected, was leading the charge with the new ball, but it was his opening bowling partner who was catching the eye. To call young Arun Sooknanan pint-sized would still be not accurate enough to describe his tiny stature, but he was turning in a performance that belied his inexperience. Possessing the ability to deliver both off and leg breaks, Arun caused the St. Anthony’s batsmen all kinds of distress until George Rowe III walked in to partner Lochan. The triumph of experience over raw talent began in earnest as the pair, easily the most accomplished and battle-tested members of the team, set about seeing off the little spinner, in the process raising a partnership of 80 over the next 10 overs.

Lochan by this time had weathered the storm and was finding the full range of his shots on both sides of the wicket. His partner Rowe would adopt a more serene approach, choosing to keep the strike rotating so that his captain could accelerate the scoring, reaching his half-century in the process. They took their team’s total to 111 until, for the 18^th over, the Mucurapo captain once more turned to his spin wizard. He would oblige with the wickets of Rowe and new batsman D. Sookram and when Constantine bowled C. Daniel in the next over, St. Anthony’s were 114-6 and Lochan was running out of partners. He greeted Arun with a boundary off the first ball of the 20^th over but was then left at the non-striker’s end after a good piece of fielding kept him to just a single next ball. This gave Sooknanan access to the lower-order batsmen and he gleefully picked up his 4^th and 5^th wickets before the over ended, finishing his day’s effort with 5-30 from his 6 impressive overs. The writing was on the wall for the St. Anthony’s innings and Mucurapo’s captain wrapped things up by finally getting the excellent Lochan L.B.W. for 56 and uprooting M. Pierre’s stumps to limit the ‘Tigers’ to 128 off just the 21 overs. Antonio Lochan had lasted through the entire innings, scoring 44 % of his team’s total by himself. It would now be up to his bowlers and his own astute leadership in the field to pull off a win.

Luckily for St. Anthony’s, their own opening bowlers were not only quite skilled themselves, but also had a couple years of experience under their belts. They would call upon every bit of it to strike early and often so that, by the time both were rested after the 8^th over, they had taken 4 wickets between them to leave a shell-shocked Mucurapo on 32-4. Lochan would then make two smart bowling changes, bringing on M. Pierre and himself to tempt the unsettled ‘Compre’ batsmen into further errors. It worked like a charm, with Pierre picking up 2 wickets in just his 2^nd over and the skipper grabbing his own pair in his 3^rd and 4^th overs so that by the end of 14^th over of the Mucurapo innings, the score was a paltry 51-8. Sensing that the end was nigh, Lochan brought Ramdhanie back on to hasten proceedings and he obliged with his 4^th wicket before the captain himself sealed a 74 run victory with the first ball of the 18^th over. Antonio Lochan had led from the front in every aspect of the game, finishing not only with the top score of the match, but also with 3-10 from his bowling spell to show the Mucurapo lads that as skilled and talented as they undoubtedly were, they were not yet ready to triumph over the hard-earned experience of both himself and his team.