Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers’ (TKR) fi­nal home match in the Caribbean Pre­mier League against An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons at Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, Wednes­day rep­re­sents their last op­por­tu­ni­ty to get their play­off hopes back on track.

The Knight Rid­ers re­main math­e­mat­i­cal­ly in con­tention for a place in the play­offs, but they will need some as­sis­tance from Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, who must con­tin­ue win­ning, ex­cept when they face TKR.

How­ev­er, the Knight Rid­ers must first take care of their own busi­ness and win their re­main­ing three match­es, start­ing tonight against the Fal­cons, who fea­ture Trinidad and To­ba­go play­ers Jay­den Seales, Amir Jan­goo and Joshua James.

TKR bats­man Alex Hales re­mains con­fi­dent that the team has enough tal­ent to turn its for­tunes around and be­lieves vic­to­ry in the fi­nal three match­es could be enough to se­cure a play­off spot.

“We have to keep be­liev­ing,” Hales said. “I think if we win our last three games, there’s a good chance we’ll go through. So we have to be­lieve. I think we just have to ex­e­cute a lit­tle bit bet­ter with the ball. I think the seam­ers have had good plans but just haven’t quite ex­e­cut­ed.”

The ex­pe­ri­enced Eng­lish bats­man said his con­fi­dence is based on the qual­i­ty with­in the Knight Rid­ers’ squad.

“There are some tal­ent­ed bowlers in the team and I’m sure they’ll turn up in the last few games. We just have to keep that be­lief. There are enough guys in form to turn this around, but we have to be­lieve.”

While Hales is pre­pared to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to help TKR se­cure three vic­to­ries, he ad­mit­ted that he would pre­fer to open the bat­ting.

“I’d rather be open­ing, to be hon­est. It’s my pre­ferred spot. I’ve done it for the best part of 18 years, so I’d much rather be open­ing,” he said. “Sano and Munners (Sunil Nar­ine and Col­in Munro) have done a re­al­ly good job. I’m in that three po­si­tion if we lose an ear­ly wick­et and then Nicky P goes in and I’m kind of float­ing.”

Hales ac­knowl­edged that he must adapt to his new role.

“It’s some­thing I’m go­ing to have to get used to and try and ad­just. I guess tonight worked out re­al­ly well, so hope­ful­ly I can be flex­i­ble with my role in this team.”

The Knight Rid­ers will face a fa­mil­iar threat from the Fal­cons’ T&T con­tin­gent, with Seales, Jan­goo and James all ac­cus­tomed to lo­cal con­di­tions and fa­mil­iar with sev­er­al TKR play­ers.

Fast bowler Alzarri Joseph will al­so pro­vide a ma­jor chal­lenge, with the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da in­ter­na­tion­al ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing de­liv­er­ies at speeds ap­proach­ing 150 kilo­me­tres per hour.

Weath­er per­mit­ting, TKR will be des­per­ate to leave T&T with a vic­to­ry and two valu­able points be­fore trav­el­ling to Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, where they will tar­get an­oth­er four points from their fi­nal match­es.

Hales al­so praised the sup­port the team has re­ceived dur­ing its time in T&T.

“Play­ing in this coun­try is prob­a­bly the best at­mos­phere I’ve played in any­where around the world. Both sta­di­ums have been amaz­ing and the fans re­al­ly turn out and make it re­al­ly en­joy­able for us guys to go out there and try and per­form.”

First ball is sched­uled for 7 pm.

Points ta­ble

Pl*Team P W L NR NRR Pts

1*An­tigua & Bar­ba­dos Fal­cons*8 4 3 1 -0.371 9

2*Guyana Ama­zon War­riors*4 4 0 0 2.604 8

3*St Lu­cia Kings*7 4 3 0 0.081 8

4*Ja­maica Kings­men*8 4 4 0 0.052 8

5*Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers*7 2 5 0 -0.130 4

6*Bar­ba­dosTri­dents*4 2 2 0 -0.811 4

7*St Kitts & Nevis­Pa­tri­ots*6 1 4 1 -0.738 3