In a match dominated by the bowlers, Trinidad & Tobago eased past the Brisbane Heat in their CLT20 encounter.
The crowd at Ranchi, waiting in anticipation for their favourite son M.S. Dhoni to come out for the Chennai Super Kings, were not treated to a run-fest in the first match, with Trinidad eventually having more than enough in their locker to pick up their first win.
Asked to bat first, T&T could only manage 135 for nine in their 20 overs, but it proved to be more than enough as the Brisbane Heat capitulated, bowled out for 110, to hand the West Indian side a 25-run win.
Brisbane Heat got off to a poor start, losing their experienced all-rounder James Hopes in just the second over. Experience was going to be the key, in what turned out to be an attritional T20 match, and Brisbane needed their seasoned campaigners for stand up.
Hopes played-on off Ravi Rampaul early before Brisbane just got stuck - as badly stuck as you can get in a T20 match.
Their run rate after seven overs was just 3.85 with the scores reading a dismal 27 for one. The required rate had climbed up from under seven at the start of the innings to well over eight and the Heat suddenly found themselves in a cold and dark place with seemingly no sign of light.
Peter Forrest fell in the eighth over after a 21-ball 16-run struggle, holing out to Sherwin Ganga at deep midwicket off the excellent Samuel Badree, who finished with figures of 4-0-16-1.
It didn't get much better for Brisbane from there, even if Joe Burns (45, 43b, 2x4, 2x6), part of the duo that struggled at the top, found some measure of form as T&T kept the pressure up and squeezed the life out of the Brisbane Heat.
Wickets kept tumbling and the equation in the final three overs read 40 from 18 deliveries with four wickets in hand - No.7 and No.8 Ben Cutting and Chris Sabburg at the crease.
Sabburg walked back to the pavilion soon enough as the onus fell completely on Cutting, who did have a tonk or to in him.
Another wicket, of Nathan Hauritz, ended the game bar the shouting with Rampaul (four for 14) finishing things off with a brilliant yorker.
There was not much entertainment in the first innings either, with West Indies and Trinidad & Tobago's wicketkeeper-batsman Denesh Ramdin the top scorer, which pretty much tells you how the match went as a whole.
Trinidad got off to a decent start with opener Lendl Simmons smashing three quickfire fours, but once the West Indies international got out, wickets fell in quick intervals.
The score went from 28 for no loss from 2.5 overs to 38 for three in 4.4 overs in a flash as medium pacer Alister McDermott (four for 37) troubled the West Indies side's batsmen.
It was up to the experienced Ramdin to play a patient, yet extremely effective, innings of 48 from 38 balls, which included four fours and two sixes.
The wicketkeeper kept his cool at one end as wickets kept tumbling at the other, eventually leading T&T to a score which they could defend.
With the bowling prowess that T&T possess, it proved to be more than enough.
