St Mary will take on Manchester in the final Kingston Wharves Under-15 Cricket Competition at Jamaica Defence Force cricket ground at 10:30 am today.

The first semi-final between Manchester and Kensington was played as scheduled last Friday at Kensington Cricket Club, with Manchester defeating the home team by 10 wickets, while the second semi-final between St Mary and Melbourne, St Mary won by four wickets at Melbourne Cricket Club in Kingston after St Mary arrived more than one hour early on Tuesday.

The match had to be rescheduled from last Friday after St Mary were delayed in heavy traffic and arrived after the umpires called off the match at 12:20 pm. They arrived more than two hours after the 10:30 scheduled start. The Jamaica Cricket Association Competitions Committee convened an emergency session to determine that the match be played on Tuesday.

Melbourne won the toss and batted, making a respectable 183 all out in 34.5 overs with Deasean Wright with 76 top scoring, while the competition’s only century maker Kevaundre Virgo gave good support with a solid 40 runs. The bulk of the wickets went to Jordan Pinnock with four for 31 in 7.5 overs, and Tyreece Saunders with three for 12 in three overs.

Melbourne lost their first wicket at 26 but recovered well to reach 154-4 when Wright, who delighted with nine boundaries, was out caught by Raheem Williams off the bowling of Pinnock. Melbourne never recovered after that as they lost the next six wickets for just 29 runs.

St Mary started solidly to put 55 runs on the board before losing their first wicket and eventually overhauling Melbourne’s total when they scored 184-6 in 38.3 overs to win by four wickets.

The batsmen gave a good account of themselves with five of them getting into double figures. The top contributors were Jordan Pinnock (40), Akeem Lewis (38 not out), and Tyreece Saunders with 23.

The wickets were shared one-a-piece by Kevaundre Virgo, Ojani Chung, Chadrick Wallace, and Joshua Bell.

St Mary’s coach Sheldon Pryce was always confident that his team would have won and gone on to their first final in the Kingston Wharves Under-15 Cricket Competition.

In the first semis, Kensington won the toss and batted but did not seem to benefit from being at home after losing their first wicket with no runs on the board, when Kadeem Levy was bowled for a duck. David Dewar joined Timari Redwood and they steadied the innings until Redwood was run out for 18 with the score on 43.

Dewar went on to score 21 but could not stem the loss of wickets which saw a steady trek from the crease to the pavilion. Kensington were eventually bowled out for 99 in 35.5 overs. Three bowlers were responsible for the bulk of the wickets. Demario Hall bagged three for 12 in 5.5 overs, Brian Barnes took two for seven in four overs, while Rasheed Harriot also got two for 23 in seven overs.

Manchester made the chase look easy after making 103 without loss in 23.5 overs. Jadon McDaniel topscored with 62 runs and Demario Hall, who was the main wicket-taker, came back to score 26 runs.

Kingston Wharves is celebrating 30 years of sponsoring the Under-15 Cricket Competition.