All roads led to the Mecca of cricket, Kensington Oval, but it was not a happy mid-afternoon hunting ground for the Barbados Tridents as they were whipped by the visiting Trinbago Knight Riders yesterday. The visitors won by seven wickets with more than two overs to spare. The crowd, however, had a blast despite the result.
Wayne Parnell took two wickets.
Trinbago Knight Riders Colin Munro was Man of the Match.
TRIDENTS CRUSHED
Sun, 07/17/2016 - 12:00am
Trinbago Knight Riders win by seven wickets
By:
Corey Greaves
WHAT should have been a challenging total turned into a cake walk for the Trinbago Knight Riders as they easily defeated the Barbados Tridents by seven wickets at Kensington Oval yesterday in the Caribbean Premier League T20 match.
The match kicked off at noon with the visitors winning the toss and electing to field in the bright sunshine in Barbados.
Knight Riders only lost three wickets in their run chase, which got off to a blazing start thanks to openers Williams Perkins and Hashim Amla, who shared in an opening wicket partnership of 29.
Though Amla was scoring slowly, Perkins as well as Colin Munro were striking the ball all over the ground and Knight Riders were always ahead of where Tridents were at the same stage of the innings.
Munro struck six sixes and two fours on his way to 68 runs off 39 balls, to make light work of the target of 173 for victory.
Knight Riders were 50/1 as compared to the Tridents 32/0 after four overs. At the halfway stage, the Knight Riders were well ahead of the run rate and where the Tridents were at the same stage with the score on 91/1 and Munro on 45 off 21 and Amla on 20 off 22.
Munro reached his half century off just 27 balls, which included two boundaries and four sixes.
Knight Riders reached the target in the 18th over as it was a disappointing fielding display by the Tridents which saw Pollard removing original wicketkeeper, Nicholas Pooran, from behind the stumps and replacing him with Steven Taylor after he had committed a few errors.
A changed batting line-up saw the home team getting off to a better start than they did in their previous match with Shoaib Malik and Steven Taylor opening the batting.
The pair put on 38 runs for the first wicket before Malik was joined by the in form AB de Villiers in the middle.
Together these two moved the scoring along nicely scoring at almost a run a ball and at the midway stage the Tridents had reached 66/1 with De Villiers on 16 off 11 balls and Malik 33 off 29 balls and run rate of 6.6 runs per over but no sixes having been struck as yet.
Knight Riders captain, Dwayne Bravo, removed Malik with a slower ball that had him playing and missing and the ball going on to hit the middle stump. Malik scored 47 runs off 44 balls, which included five boundaries.
The first six of the innings came when Kieron Pollard came to the middle and hit his opposite number, Bravo, back over his head in the 15th over.
De Villiers then struck his first six in the same over, hitting into the Hall and Griffith Stand for the best over of the Tridents innings at that point as the home team reached 113/2 by the end of the 15th.
Knight Riders’ Ronsford Beaton had bowled well all day with figures of three overs for a mere nine runs and despite not taking any wickets, he ended with four overs for just 19 runs.
Attempting to hit a full toss off Knight Riders’ Sulieman Benn, de Villiers only succeeded in picking out Kevon Cooper on the boundary in the 18th over for 45 runs off 32 balls.
Pollard finished undefeated on 41 runs off 20 deliveries, which included three boundaries and three sixes as the Tridents finished on 172/4 off their allotted overs.