ST LUCIA Kings made it three wins on the trot in the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) with a thrilling one-run victory over the Trinbago Knight Riders at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba in Trinidad on Sunday evening.
TKR won the toss and opted to field, a decision that appeared to have backfired when Johnson Charles’ half-century got the Kings off to a lightning start.
Although TKR pegged the Kings back in the middle overs a devastating 33 off 14 balls from David Wiese ensured the Knight Riders were set a very difficult 148 to win.
TKR’s task became even more difficult when they lost three early wickets inside the PowerPlay including that of Nicholas Pooran for a duck.
They never really recovered from that and left themselves too much ground to make up in the back end resulting in the narrow defeat.
The Kings had got off to a flier in the PowerPlay with the tournament’s top scorer Charles hitting another barnstorming 50. His partnership with Niroshan Dickwella added 59 runs before Ravi Rampaul carried on his good form by removing the latter.
When Rampaul removed the set Charles it led to a squeeze on the Kings scorecard as 82/3 quickly became 117/5.
However, David Wiese was able to produce an excellent counter-attacking innings at the death to help the Kings post a challenging 147.
TKR’s response saw their top order fail again as Leonardo Julien, Colin Munro and Nicholas Pooran all falling inside the powerplay to Roston Chase.
That left the middle and lower order too much to do and despite a late salvo by Andre Russell in the final over of the game, it was too little too late.
The two sides swap places in the table – with Tallawahs third on eight points and TKR in fourth position with one point less –
following the results and both will now head to Guyana with all to play for in the race for the playoffs.
Saint Lucia Kings 147/6 (Charles 54, Wiese 33; Rampaul 2/10, Narine 2/31) beat Trinbago Knight Riders 146/6 (Seifert 44, Pollard 34; Chase 3/17, Joseph 2/26) by 1 run.
