The 2022 Caribbean Pre­mier League is in full swing.

Glob­al crick­et fans ex­pec­tant­ly an­tic­i­pate this tour­na­ment, which of­fers an ex­cit­ing short form of the game. In host coun­tries, grounds are full of chil­dren, par­ents, grand­par­ents and bud­ding crick­eters hop­ing to learn from the play­ers.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, that ex­pec­ta­tion is no less, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to the home side Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers.

The T&T leg which end­ed last week­end, how­ev­er, saw an­oth­er stut­ter­ing ef­fort from TKR.

Hav­ing split the Queen’s Park Oval match­es 1-1, on Sat­ur­day night to a packed Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, TKR strug­gled to over­haul a measly 117 set by the Ja­maica Tallawahs. The sav­ing grace was that they won the game but what came through loud and clear is that the play­ers seemed to be go­ing through the mo­tions with a mix of bad field­ing, poor bat­ting and at times poor bowl­ing. That was cer­tain­ly the case on Sun­day against the St Lu­cia Kings when they lost by one run go­ing af­ter 147 as the bat­ting col­lapsed again.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who re­turned unan­nounced from Wash­ing­ton, was among the sold-out crowd who left the venue dis­ap­point­ed.

The team lost three ear­ly wick­ets in­side the pow­er play—Leonar­do Julien, Col­in Munro and Nicholas Pooran, who went dis­grace­ful­ly for a duck as his lack­lus­tre sea­son con­tin­ues. TKR were on the back foot from then, as cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard failed again to guide from the front and An­dre Rus­sell and Sunil Nar­ine’s last over at­tempt came too late.

This news­pa­per hopes the team does some soul-search­ing head­ing in­to the Guyana leg of the tour­na­ment since they sit in the fourth po­si­tion with lit­tle room for fail­ure if they hope to make the play­offs, Bar­ba­dos Roy­als hav­ing al­ready booked one of the four au­to­mat­ic spots.

One can on­ly hope that be­tween now and the next game some­thing will change in the at­ti­tudes of some of the play­ers to push them­selves to win.

We can’t say it bet­ter than cap­tain Pol­lard who summed it up af­ter Sun­day’s loss by say­ing, “We were very in­dis­ci­plined in the field and that cost us the game.”

Yes, cap­tain Pol­lard, your team needs to get its act to­geth­er. What about the pride and spir­it that was once TKR’s hall­mark? The ef­fort thus far is cer­tain­ly not what the mil­lions of TKR sup­port­ers world­wide have been ac­cus­tomed to from the four-time cham­pi­on.

Cap­tain Pol­lard him­self is a stick­ler for dis­ci­pline and this is why the team’s ef­fort thus far, let alone his, is so per­plex­ing. To date, Pooran and Rus­sell, two off-sea­son ac­qui­si­tions who were sup­posed to strength­en the unit for a re­turn to the CPL pin­na­cle, are still in ar­rears to the team. The one steady light thus far has been spin­ner Akeal Ho­sein, who is now the back­bone of the bowl­ing at­tack, along­side Nar­ine and Ravi Ram­paul, when they come to the par­ty.

In­deed, it is the bowl­ing that has kept them in with a chance for the play­offs, but if they are to make it and not dis­ap­point the fans, es­pe­cial­ly the T&T faith­ful who flocked the QPO and BLS for the T&T leg, the bat­ting and over­all team spir­it must shine through.

Need­less to say, we hope TKR achieves a turn­around.