Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR) beat Jamaica Tallawahs (JT) in a close contest by 2 runs. TKR scored 142/8 in 20 overs and JT scored 140/7 in 20 overs.
This is Knight Riders hattrick win in this CPL. In their last match Guptill’s 100 provided a full domination against Barbados Royals (BR) and won it by 133 runs. While Jamaica lost back to back matches. Lastly they lost against Guyana Amazon Warriors (GAW) by a brilliant performance by Keemo Paul and Romario Shepherd.
After winning the toss Tallawahs Captain invited Kieron Pollard to bat.
Knight Riders get a steady start as their openers Martin Guptill (15 runs) and Mark Deyal (30 runs) put 58 runs for the first wicket. Guptill was seen slow in his innings as he took 25 balls to get there.
Irish Keeper batsman, Lorcan Tucker (30 runs) and skipper Pollard (33 runs) got some solid 52 runs partnership and took their team to a comfortable position. Despite getting a good start Trinbago was at 63/3 and they played brilliantly to get off the pressure from the team a little bit.
Remaining players didn’t contribute and they concluded their innings at 142 runs by losing 8 wickets in 20 overs.
Bowlers show a terrific job by restricting the hard hitters to an average total in t20s. Mohammad Amir and Kelvin Pitman got 3 wickets each. Imad Wasim and Salman Irshad, the two Pakistanis took 1 wicket each.
Jamaica also gets a good start and their key batsmen Brandon King (36 runs) and Alex Hales (21 runs) provided 57 runs for the first wicket. After 2 matches King was able to connect well with the bat but still he didn’t convert it into a big one.
After the dismissal of King, wickets started falling and the players went to the pavilion one after the other. As a result they lost 6 wickets at 92 runs only. Then Chris Green (32 runs) showed some spark in the death overs and revived the hope of Tallawahs but unfortunately he went out just in the last delivery of the 19th over.
In the last over, 12 runs were needed but Ali Khan bowled a brillant over and as a result Jamaica only able to get 140 runs in 20 overs and lost 7 wickets.
Knight Riders bowlers showed a great class of bowling as the runs were not so much but their determination to stop the opposition was pretty good. They were pretty well supported by the fielders. Andre Russell led the chart with 3 wickets. Sunil Narine and Waqar Salamkheil get 2 wickets each.
With this win TKR claims the 3rd spot in the points table and has 7 points in 5 matches, whereas JT drops down to 5th spot with 5 points in 6 matches.
Waqar Salamkheil, TKR, Player of the Match
Brandon King, JT Captain
“The bowlers were excellent for us. They assessed the conditions well and kept them to 142. Brilliant debut for Pitman. Has been doing well in the training. Did well in pressure situations. We thought it was a decent wicket and should have chased 143. We have to go back to the drawing board and come out better.”
Kieron Pollard, TKR Captain
“Total team effort. We have the belief in the dressing room. The team must be commended for their performance. We played a night game before. The ball came on to the bat little slowly. We had to dig in deep. We needed those two points. We wanted to get out of the powerplay.
We had three spinners, we knew it would spin. Waqar has been spinning both ways. The boys bowled well. The spinners bowled well. Akeal in the powerplay. Narine bowled well. Dwaine continues to share his ideas and his knowledge. Our bowling coaches have helped us. The fans have been travelling around the caribbean. The whole of T & T will support us. We have four games in 6-7 days, we need to be at our best.”