For much of the opening #TeamUSA game in Group B of the Cricket West Indies Super 50 at the 3 W’s Oval in Barbados, Head Coach Pubudu Dassanayake must have been thinking that everything was going perfectly to plan.
Just shy of 20 overs into the chase, Monank Patel who had just moved to fifty, and Steven Taylor looked so in control as USA moved to 81 for 1 chasing the Combined Campuses and Colleges total of 221 for 9 from their 50 overs. But if the first two-thirds of the game had gone brilliantly for USA, the final 30 overs of the team USA chase proved to be anything but as a series of wickets fell to the West Indian spinners including 4 for 12 runs at one stage as ultimately USA came up 58 runs short of the local side’s total.
USA go down to a 58 run defeat to Combined Campuses & Colleges despite being in the fantastic position of 81 for 1 at one stage in their chase
Elmore Hutchinson’s 5 Wickets & 53 from Monank Patel the main positives for #TeamUSA??#Super50 SCORECARD➡️: https://t.co/cEHST2TeEK pic.twitter.com/7aZYS43x1R
— USA Cricket (@usacricket) October 6, 2018
Earlier in the day there were a huge number of positives for USA to take from an impressive outing in the field. Elmore Hutchinson moved to the top of the USA 50 wicket taking charts with a sublime 5 wicket haul in a spell of bowling that got all the reward it deserved. Timil Patel’s 10 overs were miserly and probing to finish with 2 for 27, whilst his spin partners Kenjige and Taylor were both economical.
New Skipper, Saurabh Netravalkar took 2 for 61 from his 10 overs as he led his USA’s fight back in the second half of the first innings as the Combined Campuses and Colleges collapsed from 117 for 1 to 131 for 5. They were left needing a vintage innings from Windies star, Carlos Brathwaite to save their innings and his 69 was the only thing that drove the CC & C up to their total of 221 for 9 from their 50 overs.
Despite Timil Patel’s best late order efforts from No. 8 for USA though it wasn’t to be for the Boys in Blue and they ended up being bowled all out in the 46th over to come up short by 58 runs. Steven Taylor’s 32 and Monank Patel’s 53 were the mainstays of the innings and USA will be looking to bat better throughout the rest of the tournament to start scoring some ‘W’s.
Next up for USA is the Jamaica Scorpions on Monday 12th October, see the schedule in full here.
You can watch back the match in full below thanks to the Cricket West Indies live stream of the match or check out the full scorecard by clicking here.
