North Field, National Sports Centre (Bermuda won toss): Barbados beat Bermuda by seven wickets

Barbados spoiled the Bermuda Premier League party by beating the home side in the final to become the first winners of the competition.

Zidane Clarke and Kemar Smith took two wickets each to restrict the national team to 124 for seven after they chose to bat.

Barbados then reached 126 for three with more than five overs left to play as Shaquelle Parris (50) and man of the match, wicketkeeper Leniko Boucher (40), led the chase.

Parris, whose innings contained three sixes and as many fours, dispatched Bermuda captain Delray Rawlins for six down the ground to reach his fifty off 36 balls and move his team to the brink of victory.

The No 3 batter then repeated the same dose with Rawlins’s next ball to emphatically end the match with 26 balls to spare.

“It’s a good achievement and this is what we set out to do here,” an elated Barbados coach Henderson Springer told The Royal Gazette.

“We set out to win, to play better cricket and give all the members an opportunity to play and an opportunity to adapt because these are pitches that we are not familiar with.”

As for his team’s second comfortable win over Bermuda in five days, the former Barbados off spinner and West Indies assistant coach said: “I thought it was a good total to chase and we got a good start, which always set the tone and also gives the guys in the pavilion an opportunity to analyse what’s going on.

“I thought that was the key today and so we dropped a couple of bowlers for batsmen because we knew at some point in time we would have to bat long.”

Springer was pleased with his team’s batting and bowling but felt their fielding was not up to par.

“I was not really happy with our fielding because we dropped three catches that we should have taken,” he said.

Bermuda coach Niraj Odedra cited poor batting among the reasons for the hosts demise and also felt his senior players did not live up to their lofty expectations.

“Most of the teams, out of their top five, two or three of them have scored,” he said. “That was the main important reason and I think our seniors also need to be more responsible for the team.

“If you want to get 140 to 150 runs then we need to make sure that whatever five players we have on top, and these guys are senior players, fire up and they need to take more responsibility in trying to get that total.

“When you have three people out of five failing, that’s not going to help.”

Bermuda got off to the worst possible start after Kamau Leverock was bowled for a duck with the first ball of the match as he attempted to play a fuller ball on the back foot.

Barbados tightened the screw after Terryn Fray (12) was stumped by Boucher when charging off spinner Kemar Smith, while Rawlins (5) was caught behind two overs later to leave Bermuda in a spot of bother at 28 for three.

The in-form Tre Manders (38) and Dominic Sabir (34) added a timely 53 runs for the fourth wicket to steady the ship before the former got a leading edge and was comfortably caught behind by Boucher.

Sabir battled on and with fellow all-rounder Charles Trott (21) added 34 runs as the national side slammed their foot on the gas in an attempt to accelerate the run-rate in the closing overs.

However, the momentum swung back to their opponents after Bermuda lost three wickets for just eight runs.

Sabir, who survived an earlier chance after being dropped at long-on, was run out and was quickly joined in the pavilion by Trott and Derrick Brangman (6) after the latter pair were caught behind and at long-off respectively.

Smith (two for 14) and left-arm seamer Clarke (two for 21) were Barbados’s most successful bowlers and their side got the chase off to a flying start with Boucher and Rashawn Worrell (7) adding 24 for the first wicket.

First change Leverock made the breakthrough in the third over of the innings when he had Worrell grabbed by Rawlins at mid-on, but Boucher and the incoming Parris added 51 for the second wicket to move the score along to 76 and keep the chase firmly on track.

It took a spectacular combined effort to finally dismiss Boucher with Leverock catching the batter just in front of the long-off boundary and releasing the ball in the air before crossing the rope for Sabir to complete the catch on the field of play.

Once again Barbados quickly overcame the setback with Parris adding 32 and Jonathan Drakes 14 before the latter was comfortably caught at wide long on attempting to clear the ropes.

That left Barbados at 108 for three in the fourteenth over, with Parris and incoming batter Yvan Grant (14) finishing the job with an 18-run partnership as Parris produced some powerful hitting on his way to a deserved fifty.

Leverock (one for 20), fellow seamer Cejay Outerbridge (one for 30) and left-arm spinner Brangman (one for 17) claimed the three Barbados wickets to fall.