VIN­ODE MAM­CHAN

Cap­tain Ke­iron Pol­lard grabbed four wick­ets and Lendl Sim­mons and Dar­ren Bra­vo bashed the Zouks bowlers to give their team a his­toric fourth Hero CPL ti­tle at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba yes­ter­day.

SCORES: Zouks 154 all out (19.1) v TKR 157-2 (18.1). TKR won by 8 wick­ets.

Pol­lard was bril­liant with the ball in peg­ging back the Zouks af­ter they had a strong start. Sim­mons and Bra­vo then played as they did all tour­na­ment, cre­at­ing a strong base for the fi­nal on­slaught.

Pair­ing up with the score on 19-2, Sim­mons and Bra­vo weath­ered the ear­ly storm and blos­somed beau­ti­ful­ly to­wards the end to take TKR home. They added 138 runs in 14.4 overs to se­cure a 12th suc­ces­sive win for TKR and their fourth CPL ti­tle. Sim­mons fin­ished with 84 not out off 49 balls in­clud­ing four six­es and eight fours. Bra­vo hit six six­es and two fours in an un­beat­en 58. Sim­mons fin­ished the tour­na­ment with the most runs­—356, while Bra­vo was third with 297.

Af­ter­ward, Pol­lard, who scored 207 runs, took eight wick­ets and hit 20 six­es dur­ing the se­ries, said he was very pleased with the ti­tle-win­ning ef­fort.

“Great, a great feel­ing. We have worked re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard. When we sat in the dress­ing room last year, you could have seen the dis­ap­point­ment (af­ter los­ing in the se­mi-fi­nals). We had rig­or­ous con­ver­sa­tions and the men­tal­i­ty the guys came through even be­fore the camp, this was des­tined to hap­pen. They al­ways want­ed to im­prove every game. To­tal, to­tal team ef­fort,” Pol­lard said.

He added, “We knew they (Zouks) were go­ing to come hard, they had a lot of con­fi­dence from the semi­fi­nal. But that’s where we used our ex­pe­ri­ence. We knew in the team, Bra­vo wasn’t go­ing to bowl but just hav­ing him in the field was a boost. We said we’re not go­ing to play the pitch or the con­di­tions, we’re go­ing to play the round, white ball. We knew that each time we set up the game, we will fin­ish well. We had the pow­er in our line-up. Each and every­one who came in did their role. The guys be­lieved in what we want­ed to achieve. It would have been bril­liant if the fans were here but we know what’s go­ing on (the pan­dem­ic). We hope we en­ter­tained each and every­one.”

Los­ing skip­per Daren Sam­my said his team was about 20 runs short.

“We still felt we had enough when we put them un­der pres­sure in the first six overs. But these guys, Bra­vo and Sim­mons, have played so much to­geth­er, they ab­sorbed the pres­sure and put it back on us. Of course, when you lose a fi­nal you think about things you could have done dif­fer­ent­ly. Maybe I should have been more sure about the de­ci­sion I want­ed to take to­wards the end. But we’ve been re­silient, we showed com­mit­ment and we played a brand of crick­et that shows you don’t need su­per­stars. For 8 years we have been try­ing to get to the fi­nal and we got here. I think we re­al­ly pushed TKR in all three games we played against them in the tour­na­ment and I’m re­al­ly proud of that.”

He con­grat­u­lat­ed Pol­lard and his team and the CPL or­gan­is­ers for ac­tu­al­ly get­ting crick­et in at this time.

“We cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty in the Caribbean for peo­ple to smile. And thanks to my team for the way they have turned up.”