The Guyanese team which is under the captaincy of West Indies star batsman, Ramnaresh Sarwan, was toppled out for a uncompetitive score of 103, as they succumbed to the bowling attack of the Royal Challengers Bangalore, at Supersport Park, a short distance from Pretoria.
Playing in their opening game, in Group B of the competition, Guyana lost their final wicket from the very last delivery in their 20th over. It was a day when the batting failed the Guyana Amazon Conquerors. The only respectable score came from Christopher Barnwell who managed 30 from 35 balls.
The main architect of Guyana’s swift defeat was the superb performance of Jacques Kallis, who had bowling figures of 3 wickets for 16 runs. Kallis then returned with the bat to put on a hard hitting 43 not out, spearheading his team’s fast track to 106-1, off only 12 overs.
At one point, the Royal Challengers Bangalore looked set to reach the target without losing a wicket, but that run haul soon slowed when Rahul Dravid was bowled by Royston Crandon for 39, when the score was 78 in the 11th over.
It took only 8 more balls for the Royal Challengers to reach and surpass the Guyanese total, following an entertaining batting display put on by Robin Utappa, who replaced Dravid. Utappa smashed his way to 25 from the remaining 8 balls, hitting 2 fours and 2 sixes.
After the defeat, Sarwan told reporters that, “These are inexperienced players and this is the biggest match with the largest crowd they would have ever played in, but we should have done a lot better with the bat, but now we have to learn and try to improve in our next game.”
Guyana is scheduled to play its next match on Thursday when they take on the powerful Mumbai Indians, at Kingsmead, in Durban.