CG United Regional Super50 tournament: Guyana Harpy eagles battle West Indies Academy today

– in battle of experience vs youth

In the latest fixture of the CG United Regional Super50 tournament, the Guyana Harpy Eagles (GHE) are set to take on the West Indies Academy today in what promises to be a matchup of experience versus youth.
This match will be played at the Sir Frank Worrell Memorial Ground; and to put things in perspective, Academy has a collectivity of 168 List A matches, while the GHE captain singularly has 107 and Shimron Hetmyer has 83 matches. Joshua Bishop is the most capped player in the Academy side with 33 matches.
Despite this difference in experience, both teams are tied on 23 points, with Eagles pipping Academy for fifth position based on net run rate.
Eagles are still finding their footing, and have not registered a consecutive win in five tries, but have had a few close matches. Their dominance was on show against Barbados Pride in their most recent match, wherein they won by 56 runs and in the process earned themselves valuable points.

Academy have faced similar troubles, and while their batting has been promising, they have nevertheless lost close games.
Eagles boast a team with seven international players, but the big news coming out of the camp is the immediate replacement of all-rounder Romario Shepherd with Richie Looknauth. Shepherd left the tournament in response to a family emergency, according to reports, and Looknauth has earned his maiden call-up at this level.
With 66 List A matches to his credit, and given his abilities with both bat and ball, Shepherd’s absence would doubtless hamper the Eagles’ plans. Nevertheless, Sherfane Rutherford continues to show his batting prowess, and has emerged as the leading run-scorer in the competition so far, with 244 runs from five innings at an average of 61.
Tevin Imlach has been equally up to the task with 186 runs; however, the Eagles will look to tap into the experience of Tagenarine Chanderpaul, Shimron Hetmyer and Chandrapaul Hemraj to boost their batting.
In the absence of Shepherd, the Eagles could be tempted to hand Quinten Sampson a second match to complement both the batting and seam bowling department, where Nial Smith and Shamar Joseph are featured. The spin department is covered, with Permaul manning the troops well, inclusive of Kevin Sinclair and Gudakesh Motie, who have both taken nine wickets so far.
Teddy Bishop and Guyanese Matthew Nandu have both been consistent for the Academy, scoring 195 and 180 runs respectively, while Kevin Wickham, Nyeem Young, Leonardo Julien and Ackeem Auguste have had spurts of brilliance with the bat.
Young, like Motie and Sinclair, has nine wickets to his name, while Joshua Bishop has seven and Matthew Forde has five.
An interesting match is anticipated.