PRESENTATION College San Fernando’s sweep of the PowerGen Secondary School’s Cricket League (SSCL) T20 Intercol and premiership titles was purpose-driven. They set targets and achieved them.
The "Pres Lions" closed off a nothing-less-than-perfect season on Wednesday night when they battled down to the wire to seal a five-wicket win over Fatima College in the T20 Intercol final at Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba.
The historic victory saw Pres capture their second-ever title in SSCL premiership history – the first being the league crown a few weeks back. This was also achieved in only their second season in the domestic top flight.
After winning the championship division in 2018, Pres placed third in their premiership debut year in 2019 and had their season cut short in 2020, owing to covid19.
They’ve been the team to beat since the start of the season but no school was able to go the distance. Pres finished unbeaten in the league and T20 tourneys.
In Wednesday’s final, Pres had to quickly change their plan of attack after Fatima won the toss and chose to bat first.
Fatima went on to score 115/4 and then stifled Presentation’s chase down to the last before Aadian Racha hit a game-changing five consecutive fours to put the match back within reach of a Pres victory.
Needing three from the final over, Pres cruised to 116/5, with three balls remaining.
After losing the toss, coach Rydell Ramsaran said he had to adjust their game plan against an in-form Fatima outfit.
“We wanted to bat first because we thought that it would have been difficult to bat later on. Losing the toss set us back early on. Then, when I realised how difficult the wicket playing…it was playing low and you weren’t getting pace to help shots, so I told Nickyle that every run counted and we needed to prevent the singles.”
Fatima did just that and despite Presentation’s target bowling and on-point fielding, the north team salvaged precious singles and smartly increased their score under pressure.
Ramsaran added, “Fatima also understood the conditions and played a good game. It took us a while to recognise that. Jalim is accustomed to sending the guys closer to the boundary to save runs. I was trying to get them to come in, but they didn’t want to come in and a ball pass them for four because the boundary was already small. So we knew that every run mattered.”
Before the match, Ramsaran said any score under 120 runs was a gettable one.
After opener and top scorer Riyaad Mohammed (33) was dismissed on 75/5 with five overs remaining, Racha and Chase were tasked with leading Pres over the line.
The pair faced a firestorm of spin from Fatima’s Joshua Lewis, Niall Maingot and Adrian Mahase. But coach Ramsaran was confident in the partnership.
“I know the capabilities of Chase and Racha. They bat well together and they’ve shown it in past games this season. They’re a good team on the pitch. We planned to target Mahase but Fatima organised their bowling really well to have Joshua and come back in to bowl in the last few ove
