Vin­ode Mam­chan

Ever heard of the old adage, 'it aint over till the fat la­dy sings'? Well T&T and in par­tic­u­lar, all rounder Ke­iron Pol­lard proved that right on Fri­day night, against the New South Wales Blues and in the process, booked a place in the semi­fi­nals of the IPL Cham­pi­ons League tour­na­ment.

Pol­lard bat­ted like a man pos­sessed, to take his coun­try to vic­to­ry with an 18-ball 54 not out, at the Ra­jiv Ghan­di In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et ground in Upal, Hy­der­abad. Set a win­ning tar­get of 171 runs in 20 overs, af­ter Aussie young guns Phillip Hugh­es (83) and David Warn­er (63) clob­bered the T&T bowl­ing, this coun­try was look­ing down the bar­rel of a gun, when Pol­lard walked to the crease. T&T had slipped to 118/6 off 15.2 overs and it looked as it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the game was over, in the Aus­tralians favour. En­ter Pol­lard and the com­plex­ion of the game to­tal­ly changed. He smashed the bowl­ing of Aussie Test trio Brett Lee, Doug Bollinger and Stu­art Clark to all parts of the huge ground, much to the de­light of the 'Tri­ni Cham­pi­ons Posse,' as they are be­ing called in In­dia. When Pol­lard took his guard, 53 runs were need­ed off 28 balls. It looked like cur­tains for the Caribbean men but their hand­ful of fans kept shout­ing and ral­ly­ing be­hind the boys. With every ball that flew out of the ground their shout­ing be­came loud­er and at this point, the In­di­an fans joined in and start­ed to call on Pol­lard for six­es.

The burly Pol­lard an­swered their call and sent a to­tal off five six­es sail­ing out of the ground and al­so struck five fours. In part­ner­ship with Sher­win Gan­ga (four not out), Pol­lard won the match with nine balls to spare. Their part­ner­ship was worth 53 runs off 19 balls. Pri­or to Pol­lard's en­try, a com­e­dy of er­rors led to three run outs in the T&T in­nings and skip­per Daren Gan­ga (32), Dar­ren Bra­vo (27) and De­nesh Ramdin (23) all had their in­nings cut short af­ter get­ting starts. William Perkins led the charge by show­ing Lee no re­spect in carv­ing out 16 from 13 balls at the top of the or­der. Ear­li­er, Warn­er and Hugh­es set a tour­na­ment record by putting to­geth­er the high­est part­ner­ship of the Cham­pi­ons League. They post­ed 121 runs for the first wick­et off 15.2 overs, beat­ing the pre­vi­ous mark of 81 set by Wayam­ba's HG Ku­latun­ga and Michael Van­dort against Vic­to­ria.

The duo was bru­tal on any­thing off line and pun­ished all the bowlers with the ex­cep­tion of Sher­win Gan­ga who bowled his four overs for just 17 runs. Dwayne Bra­vo came to­wards the end of the in­nings and grabbed three wick­ets in the fi­nal over to take his tal­ly in the se­ries to 10–the high­est among all bowlers. T&T skip­per Daren Gan­ga said this vic­to­ry was for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the West In­dies. "I am sure with this vic­to­ry it is a car­ni­val af­fair at home and I would like to tell the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the West In­dies this vic­to­ry was for them." Gan­ga con­tin­ued: "I am very hap­py with the way the boys are fight­ing and I must con­grat­u­lat­ed Pol­lard. We know what he is ca­pa­ble off and he came through for us to­day. As the tour­na­ment pro­gress­es we will see a lot more guys com­ing through with great per­for­mances." T&T's next match is against Di­a­mond Ea­gles at Hy­der­abad on Sun­day.