Meades and Oliver put their hosts to the sword

JUSTIN MEADES unashamedly stole the limelight from his stand-in captain Matt Oliver at Port Soif on Saturday.

Oliver, taking over the Cobo weekend captaincy reins from the holidaying Stuart Le Prevost, hit an excellent century opening the batting for his side against Optimists Rovers.

However, his 90-ball innings was made to look somewhat pedestrian by the big-hitting Australian who made a brilliant 50-ball ton of his own having come to the wicket in the 31st over.

Both knocks were confident ones from the two island players, but they were made in contrasting styles with the left-handed opener's 109 scored in a well controlled manner while Meades' unbeaten 101 was sheer brutality against a weakened ORs attack, who were missing back-injury victim Lee Savident as well as regular captain Stuart Bisson and who had no answers.

'Meadesy was coming in with the situation perfectly set up for him to finish it off in his usual style, but even I did not expect him to score a 50-ball hundred,' said Oliver.

The captain had earlier recalled how, when Meades had joined him in the middle, he had told the Australian to take some time to get his eye in. He then watched Meades hammer his first ball to the long-off boundary.