In a decisive clash on April 14, Saint Lucia delivered a dominant performance to claim the pole position in the Winlott Inc Windward Islands Under-19 Men’s Super50 Championship, beating defending title holders and match hosts Dominica by a convincing 89-run margin. The upset result reshuffled the tournament standings, pushing Saint Lucia’s net run rate to a tournament-leading 1.719, while Dominica dropped to second place with a net run rate of 0.642. Both teams hold an equal win-loss record of two victories and one defeat through their first three matches, after Grenada dropped further off the pace by handing St. Vincent & the Grenadines their first win of the competition.
Played at Dominica’s Benjamin Park, the match got off to a solid start for Saint Lucia after captain Theo Edward won the pre-match toss and elected to set a target batting first. A match-winning half-century from middle-order batsman Johnathan Daniel anchored the visitors’ innings, guiding them to a total of 162 all out in 42.1 overs. Daniel faced 64 deliveries during his standout knock, striking four boundaries and one maximum to become Saint Lucia’s first half-centurion of the 2025 tournament. He received valuable support from the team’s opening pair: Roystan Fanis compiled a patient 25 runs from 59 balls, while Tyler Venner chipped in with 20 runs from 46 deliveries to build on the early foundation.
Dominica’s chase got off to a catastrophic start that they never recovered from. Venner, who contributed with the bat earlier, opened the bowling for Saint Lucia and sent Dominica’s top-order batter Derwin Lewis back to the pavilion for a golden duck with just his fifth legal delivery of the innings. By the end of the fourth over, Nathaniel Joseph produced a caught-and-bowled dismissal to remove the other Dominica opener Alex Armstrong, also without scoring, leaving the hosts reeling at two wickets down for no runs. The collapse continued in the eighth over, when Bjorn Fanis claimed his only wicket of the day to leave Dominica three wickets down before they had even reached double figures.
Venner struck again in the very next over, dismissing batter Earsinho Fontaine for just three runs to extend Dominica’s misery. A late mini-resistance pushed the home side’s score to 47 for four, but off-spinner Neil Poyotte triggered the final collapse that wrapped up the match. Poyotte took back-to-back wickets of Kelan Christmas and Kenneth Burton, before combining with paceman Cody Fontenelle to clean up the last four Dominica wickets for just 18 runs. The defending champions were bowled out for only 73 runs, handing Saint Lucia a comprehensive 89-run victory. The bowling figures told the story of the visitors’ dominance: Poyotte finished with incredible figures of 4 wickets for 11 runs from his four overs, Fanis claimed 1 for 10 from four overs, and Fontenelle took 2 wickets for 9 runs from 2.5 overs.
Daniel’s standout knock marked not only his first half-century for the tournament but only the second half-century recorded across all competing teams this year. The innings pushed Daniel to the top of the tournament’s run-scoring charts, with a total of 107 runs from three matches at an average of 35.67. For Saint Lucia’s bowling attack, Nathaniel Joseph claimed his seventh wicket of the competition to move him to the top of the team’s wicket-taking rankings, and only two bowlers across the entire tournament — Poyotte and Liam Wilson — boast a better economy rate than Joseph’s 3.23 runs conceded per over.