Kingston, JAMAICA: The Windward Islands Volcanoes crashed to their second defeat in as many matches on the penultimate day of their four-day match against Jamaica’s Scorpions at Sabina Park here today.
Like last week, when they went down to defeat to the Guyana Jaguars, it was a dramatic second innings collapse that was responsible for the Volcanoes loss, in chasing a winning target of under 200.
The scores: Jamaica 259 (Andrew McCarthy 92, Liam Sebastien 7-58) and 128 (Mervyn Matthew 5-31, Shane Shillingford 5-57) beat Windward Island 212 ( Sunil Ambris 89, Nikita Miller 4-67) and 145 (Devon Smith 50, Nikita Miller 5-46) by 30 runs
Shane Shillingford and Mervyn Matthew swung the match in Windwards favour by grabbing ten wickets between them to bowl out the Scorpions for a meagre second innings 128 just after lunch.
However Nikita Miller with a five wicket haul pulled the Scorpions back into contention by throwing Windward second innings into disarray, effectively derailing their effort to reach the winning target of 176.
The Scorpions, bowled out the Windwards for 145 to prevail inside three days, on a day when 20 wickets tumbled, the majority of which were victims of spin bowling.
Resuming their second innings on six without loss, the home side soon ran into problems as Dominicans Mervyn Matthew and Shane Shillingford wreaked havoc to finish the innings with five for 31 and five for 57 respectively.
Jamaica lost wickets quickly and by the lunch interval they were reeling at 59 for seven with most of their top order batsmen back in the pavilion.
However, the highlight of their batting was a lower order fight-back between Nikita Miller and Damion Jacobs who posted a gutsy 8 wicket partnership that took them past the 100 run mark.
Jacobs top scored with 40 which featured five fours while Miller who struck the same number of fours contributed 39.
However, Jamaica were all out before tea giving Windwards more than a day to reach the winning target of 176.
Grenada’s Devon Smith struck four fours in an even 50 from 93 balls to inspire the chase while Sunil Ambris of St Vincent and the Grenadines contributed 40, to follow his first innings top score of 89.
But with the exception of St Lucian Dalton Polius who chipped in with 26, no other Hurricane batsman got past ten as Miler spun his way through the middle and lower order.
The visitors slumped to 90 for four and never really recovered despite the rescue effort attempted by Smith and Ambris.
Their last five wickets tumbled for just 19 runs with their innings destroyer Miller finishing the match with figures of nine wickets for 113 runs.
The Windward Islands will be at home to The Leeward Islands in Dominica in their third match of thev tournament starting this coming Friday.