VINODE MAMCHAN
Bridgetown was turned into a sea of red on Sunday night, as fans from T&T overtook the town, after their team the Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR) completed a four-wicket victory over the home team - the Barbados Tridents in their latest Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) encounter at Kensington Oval.
Over 1000 Trinis thronged the mecca of regional cricket to see TKR restrict the home team to 128/8 off their 20 overs. They were then brought to their feet on many occasions by New Zealander Brendan McCullum who cracked 68 to lead the visitors home after a wobble at 60/4. With the win, the TKR now leads the standings with eight points from six matches heading into their seventh round encounter against the St. Kitts/Nevis Patriots on the weekend in St. Kitts.
Celebrations by the T&T fans went early into Monday morning as they transferred their party into St. Lawrence Gap where they sang and ran up and down the gap. They were singing Dwayne Bravo’s tune ‘Champion’ and the Barbadians in the gap were very sporting indeed going up to the visitors and congratulating them on the victory. They were saying that no way TKR would not repeat as champions of the CPL and that they ruled things in Barbados.
Meanwhile, after the victory skipper, Bravo said, "It is a great feeling, always a great feeling to win a cricket game. Two points are always good. Happy with the entire performance, to restrict a very good batting line up after they elect to bat. Good to have a good left-arm orthodox spinner in Khary Pierre, a good off-spinner in Sunil Narine and a good leg spinner in Fawad Ahmed. We base our team on allrounders and spinners."
The Man of the match McCullum said, "Batting wasn't very comfortable on this wicket and a few demons from last year when I broke my arm here. It was a hard wicket to get singles, had to stay strong and hit down the ground. Their bowling line-up with their big tall fast bowlers was tough to adjust to on this pitch. But with low totals, it's all about partnerships. On a wicket like this I wanted to start of batting on the leg so that I had room outside off for the cut, and later on, I started jumping into the off side.”
Tridents skipper Jason Holder felt his batting left the bowlers with very little to defend. He said, "We were 30-40 runs short. This pitch is a little difficult to start on, every pitch becomes easier when you spend time on it and we didn't. It was a tough call dropping Martin Guptill because in four games we haven't capitalised in the Powerplay, so we wanted to give someone else a chance. Time to go back to the drawing board. I think all stats will show you don't win if you lose three wickets in the Powerplay. We've got to stay calm. We still have five games. We can't look too far ahead. We have to focus on our three home games. No need to panic, there's still a lot of cricket left.”