As Heavy rainfall and flooding persists across most of Trinidad, the final two group A matches for Canada were abandoned without a single ball bowled.
Canada, thus finish their inaugural appearance in Cricket West Indies (CWI) regional Super50 with 1 win out of their 6 completed matches and a total of 8 points from their 8 matches in the group stages.
Canada’s final two group matches were scheduled against Windies “B” and Trinidad & Tobago Red Force, the latter qualifying for the semi-finals after finishing 2nd in the group behind Guyana Jaguars.
Canada’s last completed match was against Guyana Jaguars, against whom they lost by 4 wickets. Overall, it was a good learning experience for Canadian players and good exposure for some of the inexperienced players in the 50-overs format against stronger domestic competition in West Indies domestic structure.
Canada are part of the final edition of ICC World Cricket League Division 2, to be held in Apr 2019 and their participation in Super50 tournament has provided them good match-time in the middle in the longer format of red-ball cricket.
Navneet Dhaliwal (271 runs in 6 matches with 45.16 average) was Canada’s best batsman during the tournament by a big fair margin with new Captain and former South African, Davy Jacobs (175 runs in 6 matches with 35 average) being their 2nd highest run-scorer.
Nitish Kumar (158 runs in 6 matches), Rodrigo Thomas (124 runs in 4 matches) & Harsh Thaker (114 runs in 5 matches) round up the top 5 for Canada among the batsmen during the Super50 tournament.
Ramesh Don Eranga claimed 17 wickets in his 6 matches to be the highest wicket-taker in the entire tournament during the group stages. His wickets came at an average of 12.11 and an economy of below 4.50 runs per over. Mighty statistics to have in a strong regional tournament by any means.
Salman Nazar (6 wickets at 41.33), Sukhdeep Brar (5 wickets at 33.00), Nikhil Dutta (5 wickets at 46.00) were the other main wicket-takers for Canada during the tournament.
One hopes that Canada are invited again next time to play in regional Super50 event and the team will only build from strength-to-strength as they progress.
