Oh dear, what can the matter be?
Like Martika’s Toy Soldiers, we saw the Trinbago Knight Riders all fall down step by step against a determined attack from Guyana’s Amazon Warriors on Saturday night, a result that not only assured our exit from this year’s Caribbean Premier League but ensured we finished dead last.
And from the responses rained down upon social media platforms the minute the game ended, if the TKR didn’t realise before, they ought to know by now that Trinis aren’t playing games with their cricket.
The online post-mortem was swift, instructive and, in many cases, downright brutal. Trinis were in no mood to hold back, hitting the team for ‘Hero Maximums’ following a dismal season that culminated at the Providence Stadium in Georgetown, Guyana.
Of course, no one realistically expects a team to dominate in every single tournament. But it was the way the losses occurred that left fans all in an uproar.
Take the last three games for example. Against the Warriors, St Kitts and Nevis Patriots and St Lucia Kings, the script was just about the same. In all three games, TKR’s opponents batted first and found runs easy to come by in the death overs of their innings.
Against the Patriots, in particular, TKR was clobbered for 85 runs in the last five overs, while the other two opponents also blasted the bowlers across the field in like fashion during their innings.
Facing formidable run rates, the T&T-based team then found themselves having to hit out somewhere around the 13th overs.
The risks needed to meet the required run rates saw them, in all three games, ending short of the targets.
We take nothing away from their opponents. They played their games well and deservingly won.
But the TKR strategies were often puzzling, with alterations made to the batting line-up that saw some of the bigger hitters entering the game way too late to make a difference, forcing them to take risks from the get-go.
From the early games, it was clear that the team was not gelling this year as it had done before. But even so, few would have predicted the mighty TKR winning just three of their 10 games.
Fewer still would have thought that when it came down to the wire, the showing would have been so poor.
And oh did the Guyanese love it, as they rightfully should.
The rivalry that has developed between these two nations is as competitive as it is sweet. The heat over whether curry chicken is more correct than chicken curry is but a small part of the fire that these two nations have been bringing against each other on and off the pitch. Where CPL is concerned, TKR vs GAW games have become marquee clashes of the tournaments.
Yet, it has also been a fire burning with love, as fans of Guyana and T&T share the beauty of our “Caribbean-ness’ by mingling together in the stands, pelting nothing but hilarious picong at each other while the players do the violent smashings on the field.
It was no different on Saturday. Amid the cheers and jeers, the interactions between the fans were a reminder that while we take the game seriously, our friendships are not hurt by the outcomes.
The founders of Caricom and the CPL organisers can take pride in this, as another testimony that cricket is a force of unity among us.
The TKR players know very well that they must fix their team if they are to recapture the hearts of T&T fans and win back bragging rights over our brothers and sisters in Guyana next year.
We tip our hats to Guyana this time. But we also send them a warning, as we do to the TKR, that Trinis aren’t prepared to play games with our cricket next time around.