Heavy rain forced yesterday’s Premier and First Division matches to be called off, a major blow for Cleveland and Bailey’s Bay before next weekend’s Eastern Counties second-round match at Sea Breeze Oval.

Premier Division clubs have been inactive since the Cup Match break and yesterday’s abandonment means that there have been no league matches for three weeks, with Cleveland not playing a game since their counties upset over champions St David’s.

Irving Romaine, the Bailey’s Bay coach, expressed disappointment at the cancellation of the match with St George’s as his team were hoping to include two or three fringe players leading up to the counties on Saturday.

“It hurts the players on the outside who we were looking to play today,” Romaine said. “We were going to play some different players in this game, a youngster like Jordan Smith, and some players are back from the under-17 football squad and we had them in the team today because Delray [Rawlins] is not eligible to play county. He is actually in the Caribbean playing [with ICC Americas in the West Indies Under 19 tournament].

“Stephen Outerbridge is away and Lateef Trott was unavailable so we had some youngsters in to play which would have been like a trial match for them.”

Bay will train all this week starting this evening and will pick their counties team on Wednesday evening.

“They have another opportunity if the rain stops on Tuesday when we have an interclub match against the Commercial players in a Twenty20, but today would have been a good day for them in a 50 overs match, especially young Jordan who has had a good stint in school in England and would have had a chance to bowl today,” Romaine stated.

“Primarily he’s an off spinner and from speaking to him his school has had him doing the bulk of the bowling because he’s their only off spinner. In our situation we need to bowl out Cleveland, who won the last round fair and square and it’s going to be hard beating them.”

The other matches, Cleveland versus Willow Cuts at Wellington Oval and Somerset and Southampton Rangers were also hit by the rain though Rangers are understood to have been awarded the points by the Bermuda Cricket Board because Somerset forfeited the match and did not have their wicket covered.

Rangers were informed yesterday morning that the match was off.

Jordan Smith played himself into contention for a spot in the Bay counties team when he claimed four wickets for nine runs in five overs to lead Bermuda Under-17 to a 72-run win over nine-men Devonshire Recreation Club in a First Division match at the National Sports Centre on Saturday.

The under-17s scored 166 for eight in their allotted 38 overs of the rain-shortened match and then dismissed Rec for 94 in 30.5 overs. High man for the youngsters was Shakeal Outerbridge with 44 and San’j Dill 29 while tailender Isiah Richardson scored 17 not out and opener Amair Ebbin 17. Koshun Lightbourne took three for 46 from ten overs.

Oladapo Frederick, who opened the batting, carried his bat through the Rec innings with 44 not out but only two other players reached double figures as Jordan Smith, who opened the Bermuda Under-17 bowling, claimed the first four wickets before Chare Smith, his new-ball partner, finished off the match with the last two wickets in claiming two for 24 from 7.5 overs.

The 18 members of the Bermuda squad for the ICC Americas Under-17 Tournament with Canada and the United States here next week, will hold a training camp this week at the North Field, National Sports Centre, to prepare for the tournament, which runs from August 18 to 23.