Trinbago Knight Riders avenged their defeat to St Lucia Kings two days ago with a comfortable 27-run victory over Caribbean Premier League bottom-dwellers at Warner Park in St Kitts today.
Captain Kieron Pollard top-scored with a Man-of-the-Match 41 off 29 balls while Tim Seifert chipped in with a quick-fire 37 off 25 deliveries as TKR raised 158 for seven off their 20 overs.
The target proved a mountain too high to climb for Kings despite an unbeaten 81 off 55 deliveries from opener Andre Fletcher, as they finished on 131 for seven.
Fast bowler Ravi Rampaul hurt the run chase with three for 34 – including two wickets off successive deliveries in the 15th over – while left-arm pacer Isuru Udana supported with two for 32.
“I am very pleased. We needed to bounce back. We just lost by a couple runs in the last game,” Pollard said.
“And you talk about small margins in T20 cricket, and when you have a surface like this and the different things around, you have to really dig in and do the dirty work and I thought we did that fairly well as a team today.”
Sent in, TKR got a slow 24 off 32 balls from opener Sunil Narine, as they found scoring difficult over the first half to the game, to be crawling at 66 for three at the 11th over.
Unbeaten on one then, Pollard exploded to strike half-dozen fours and a six in a 78-run, fifth wicket stand with Seifert who belted four fours and two sixes, TKR gathering 47 runs from the last three overs.
“I think both teams were very similar after 12 overs under tough conditions for the spinners,” said Kings skipper Faf du Plessis, who got a spell of four for 24 from seamer Kesrick Williams.
“We played really well until those last three overs where we let it slip. I think to go for that many in the last three [overs] on this wicket is 20 runs too much.
“We did a lot of good things today but it was the last three overs with the ball and then with the bat, we needed a little bit more something through the middle there but it was tough.”
In reply, Kings never found the tempo required and despite a 40-run, second wicket stand between Fletcher and du Plessis (14), were stalling at 54 for two at the end of the tenth over.
Fletcher accelerated to lash half-dozen fours and four sixes but Kings lost wickets steadily – five going down for 44 runs – pushing the required run rate over the last five overs to a very difficult 16 runs per over.
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