Canada’s Caribbean cricket party gets underway with win over Hampshire

Canada has completed a comprehensive win over Hampshire in their opening match of the CT20 tournament. The match, covered live across the country on CBCsports was Canada’s first win of the tournament and first ever at the CT20 tournament. Hampshire are the reigning Friends Provident T20 league champions from the ECB’s domestic competition.

Batting first Canada squandered a hot start from Ruvindu Gunasekera (29) and used a late flourish from Rizwan Cheema 31 to post a total of 129. While Canada would have expected more the total was a defend-able one and Canada were encouraged by Jamaica defending a small total on Tuesday.

A little slip up in the first few overs with some drop catches would not deter the Canadians however as sharp fielding and great bowling from Parth Desai (2-15), Cheema (2-27), Jimmy Hansra (1-14) and Harvir Baidwan (1-21) ensured that Hampshire never got close, as they closed at 106-8.

For his efforts, Parth Desai was named the man of the match.

The two teams have met only once before over 100 years ago in a match that was drawn.

Apollo Convention Centres of GTA have partnered with Cricket Canada and WICB to bring all the matches live to Canadians live on cbcsports.ca

Click here to see the scorecard for this match (embed the following link in the word here:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ct20-11/engine/match/488470.html