By FRANCIS JOSEPH
The Trinbago Knight Riders executed a clinical performance on Saturday night to beat the Barbados Tridents at Kensington Oval, Barbados.
But was this victory too late to take the Knight Riders into the final four of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL)?
The victory pushed the Knight Riders to six points from nine matches with one preliminary game to go on September 11 against the Guyana Amazon Warriors at Providence in Guyana.
The Knight Riders are sixth on the table with the top five in a battle of their own to secure a top four spot. The Knight Riders have only themselves to blame for their sorry state having lost matches by seven runs, nine runs, and eight runs, respectively.
So back to Saturday night’s game.
The Knight Riders had first strike and they struggled to 147 for six in their 20 overs. Captain Nicholas Pooran was the mainstay of the innings with 59. He started off slowly taking ten balls to get off the mark. Then he got into the groove and the big shots came. A whip over the leg side off debutant Jakeem Pollard warmed him up, before he hit three in a row off Mujeeb Ur Rahman in the ninth over and followed up with three more in a row, this time off Gudakesh Motie in the 14th over.
Eventually, he scored 59 off 37 balls.
Motie took three wickets for the Tridents, going for 29 in just two overs, while Mujeeb picked up 2 for 22 in his four overs.
Tridents were only chasing 148, but they were never really in the game once Sunil Narine took three wickets in the power play. With Akeal Hosein also striking in the sixth over, Tridents ended that phase at 35 for 4; the scoring never took off, with Usman Tariq coming on and conceding just 25 in his four overs, and Jyd Goolie picking up three wickets with his off spin.
Opener Zachary Carter and Sherfane Rutherford both top scored with 21 each. When Narine returned to take the final wicket, Tridents had been bowled out with nine balls to spare.
The Knight Riders spin quartet of Narine, Hosein, Tariq and Goolie finished with combined figures of 8 for 82 in 14.3 overs, while the fast bowler Lahiru Kumara took two wickets including that of Rutherford. The Tridents were bowled out for 112. losing by 35 runs.
