Due for a big score, Colin Munro saw the innings through to the final ball
Trinbago Knight Riders’ unassailable hold on the CPL continued in Tarouba with Colin Munro’s 65 underpinning the second-highest total of the season, to leave the TKR with seven wins from their first seven games.
The TKR spinners then sucked the life out of the Jamaica Tallawahs’ chase, leaving them locked in a three-way fight with Guyana and Barbados Tridents for two semi-final spots.
TKR scored at breakneck speed at both ends of the innings, Munro and Kieron Pollard hauling them up to an imposing total, after Sunil Narine’s 11-ball 29 had set the tone. The Tallawahs never looked like getting near chasing 185, and the margin of defeat would have been much greater had it not been for a consolatory 65-run partnership between Andre Russell and Carlos Brathwaite with the game effectively gone.
The Knight Riders’ only concern at this stage will be the precedent of Guyana Amazon Warriors, who won 11 games out of 11 before losing last year’s final, not least with a straight knockout format in the final stages this season.
Big guns return
Andre Russell struck 50* in vain
The stars were back on both sides, with Dwayne Bravo reinstated in the TKR team after being rested against the Tridents, and Narine returning after having kidney stones removed.
Russell’s knee injury had also recovered – albeit only enough for him to spend most of the innings at slip, and rendering him unable to bowl.
Rovman Powell opted to use himself as the fifth bowler, with left-arm spinner Veerasammy Permaul dropping out of the side. It proved costly, as he leaked 48 runs in his four overs.
Narine sets the tone
It was anticipated that run-scoring would prove easier on a fresh Brian Lara Academy pitch, but few would have predicted 32 to come off the first 15 balls.
Twenty-nine of those were thanks to Narine, who freed him arms to crash Fidel Edwards for two fours and a top-edged six, before spanking the first three balls of Brathwaite’s over for boundaries.
He fell flashing at a cutter outside his off-stump, although he clearly thought he hadn’t hit it; but he had done his job in getting Trinbago off to a flying start. It was an innings that displayed Narine’s evolution as a hitter at the top of the order. He was initially promoted to counter spin in the Powerplay, but has developed his game so that he is now effective – if not always easy on the eye – against most seamers, too.
Late blitzes
The Knight Riders were in danger of failing to build on Narine’s bright start as they stumbled their way to 113 for 3 after 15 overs, with Sandeep Lamichhane again proving effective in a spell of 1 for 20 from his four.
A late blitz from Captain Keiron Pollard was instrumental
Lendl Simmons scored at a strike rate below 100, continuing his struggles through the tournament, while Munro had been tied down by the spin through the middle overs, having been dropped on four by Jermaine Blackwood.
Munro and Pollard, however, added 71 off the last five overs, punishing some wayward death bowling.
Munro reverse-swept a pair of boundaries off Mujeeb, before Powell leaked 18 from his final over via a six and four from Munro, two wides and a front-foot no-ball.
Pollard was soon in on the act, muscling Mujeeb down the ground and pulling him behind square, before clobbering the expensive Fidel Edwards over long-on.
Brathwaite’s final over started with a six and two wides as Pollard went down the ground again, with Munro pulling four more and holing out against the last ball as Trinbago finished on 184.
Trial by spin
The Tallawahs have managed to assemble an XI made up exclusively of right-handed batsmen, so it was no surprise that Pollard – a savvy captain, often influenced by match-ups – opted to throw the new ball to his left-arm spinners Khary Pierre and Akeal Hosein.
They both struck early, with Hosein having Chadwick Walton caught at point off the first ball of the chase to extend the opener’s dreadful run in this tournament, and Pierre bowling Blackwood.
All things considered, there were 12 overs of spin in the first 13, and after Fawad Ahmed removed Nkrumah Bonner and Powell, it seemed everything rested on the shoulders of Glenn Phillips and Russell from 84 for 4.
Too little, too late
The Tallawahs decided against promoting Russell up the order, even in a mammoth chase, meaning that he had scored seven from seven balls from No. 6 with 80 needed from the final four overs.
Their use of him brings to mind buying a Ferrari and leaving it in a garage for a year, only to expect it to click into gear straight away.
Russell eventually hammered Narine over deep midwicket at the end of the 17th, before clubbing Jayden Seales for four, four and six in the 18th, and nailing Pollard for two sixes and a four in the final over; but it only served as a taste of what might have been.
He eventually added 68 from 35 balls in partnership with Brathwaite, but it was too little, too late. (ESPNCricinfo)
