St Catherine Cricket Club skipper Danza Hyatt was pleased with his team’s batting unit after their five-wicket win over Melbourne CC at Chedwin Park last Saturday propelled them into the Jamaica Cricket Association All-island limited- overs final.

After restricting Melbourne to 200-9, the back-to-back reigning champions cantered to 202-5 in the 39th over to reach the championship match for a third-straight year.

St Catherine are slated to battle Kingston CC in Saturday’s final at the Chedwin Park venue.

“We lost the toss, but we went out and restricted the Melbourne team to 200. If you’re in a semi-final game and you get 200 to chase you’ll be happy with that,” Hyatt told the Jamaica Observer in a post-game interview.

He had high praise for openers Shacaya Thomas, who top-scored with 64 not out, and Oraine Williams (44), for the composure they displayed in a stand of 79 runs.

“The way Shacaya and Oraine Williams batted at the start was testament to how well we’ve batted this season, and then we just finished it off. We’re confident bowling and batting-wise [going into the final], though there is a bit of grey area in the field,” the St Catherine captain added.

Yannick Elliott, the Melbourne captain, said his team’s score was not enough to properly defend on a favourable batting surface.

“200 runs were going to be very difficult to defend on a good wicket against a team like St Catherine with a very strong batting line-up. We never had a lot of runs on the board. Even though our team tried to defend, it was always going to be an uphill task for us.

Elliott said the bowling of West Indies pacer Andre Russell, who is almost fully recovered from a left hamstring injury, made the difference.

“Russell came back and bowled a good second spell, which took the game away from us. Games like this we need at least two people from the top four to bat through the innings and unfortunately it didn’t happen for us,” the Melbourne skipper explained.

Kingston booked their spot in the final after defeating Kensington CC by 61 runs at Kensington Park.

— Sanjay Myers