Vin­ode Mam­chan

Af­ter de­feat­ing the St. Lu­cia Zouks in their eighth match of the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment on Tues­day night, the at­ten­tion of the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers team fell on all rounder Kevon Coop­er, who is hav­ing work per­mit is­sues to play in their next match against the St. Kitts Pa­tri­ots on Fri­day night.

As the team was due to leave St. Lu­cia yes­ter­day evening for Fort Laud­erdale, USA, of­fi­cials were hasti­ly try­ing to arrange a work per­mit for Coop­er. It is un­der­stood that the Queen's Park play­er ran afoul of re­quire­ments for the visa and TKR was try­ing to arrange it at the last minute.

An­oth­er play­er who is hav­ing prob­lems ob­tain­ing a work per­mit is Pak­istani Ahmed She­hzad who is play­ing for the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents. The team went through their paces at the Cen­tral Broward Re­gion­al Park yes­ter­day af­ter­noon and the right han­der was a no­tice­able ab­sen­tee.

Mean­while, fel­low Pak­istani Umar Ak­mal fi­nal­ly came to the CPL par­ty and his tim­ing could not have been bet­ter, we he res­cued the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers from a precipice of dis­as­ter to keep alive their hopes in the 2016 edi­tion of the tour­na­ment.

The de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons were dead and buried at 63/5 in the 11th over go­ing af­ter a vic­to­ry tar­get of 168. A loss would have tak­en the TKR to the brink of elim­i­na­tion but Ak­mal counter-at­tacked the home team, to score a rapid un­beat­en 73, which took them over the line.

Zouks skip­per con­tin­ued to cel­e­brate the nam­ing of the Sta­di­um af­ter him with a top score of 37 not out, to lead his team to a good 167/6 in their 20 overs.

Sam­my's at­tack then ripped out the top and mid­dle or­der of the TKR's bat­ting to leave them half down and over 100 runs still need­ed for vic­to­ry. Ak­mal, whose broth­er Kam­ran scored a half cen­tu­ry in the fi­nals of the CPL last year, to lead the Red Steel to the ti­tle, nev­er gave up and found an al­ly in New Zealan­der An­ton De­v­ci­ch to re­vive the in­nings. They need­ed to score at a fast rate, while pre­serv­ing their wick­ets and was able to come through. De­v­ci­ch made 25 and when he left it took the ef­forts of Sunil Nar­ine to as­sist Ak­mal in tak­ing the team over the line. Nar­ine slammed 17 as he sup­port­ed Ak­mal who was left with the task of get­ting 50 runs in the last five fours at the fall of De­v­ci­ch's wick­et.

With on­ly four runs com­ing in the 16th over, TKR re­quired 46 runs from four overs. Ak­mal tar­get­ed Jerome Tay­lor and slapped him for three straight six­es and a four. In the process he raised his half cen­tu­ry of 27 balls. A to­tal of 23 runs came from Tay­lor's over and the equa­tion was a man­age­able 23 from 18 balls. Three dot balls fol­lowed from Wat­son but Nar­ine struck two six­es of the last three balls to give TKR a fi­nal de­ci­sive ad­van­tage. Ak­mal re­mained un­beat­en on 73 of 35 balls with three fours and sev­en six­es.

STAND­INGS

Teams M W L T NR PTS NRR

Ja­maica Tallawahs 8 6 1 0 0 13 +1.502

Guyana Ama­zon War­riors 8 5 3 0 0 10 +0.017

Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers 8 4 4 0 0 8 -0.029

St Lu­cia Zouks 8 4 4 0 0 8 -0.101

Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents 8 3 4 0 1 7 -0.184

St. Kitts Pa­tri­ots 8 1 7 0 0 2 -1.022