Medi­um-pac­er Akeem Jor­dan made a dream de­but while open­er Evin Lewis struck his sec­ond half-cen­tu­ry of the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League as the St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots beat the St Lu­cia Zouks by six wick­ets at Warn­er Park, St Kitts, on Sun­day.

Jor­dan, a 24-year-old right-arm medi­um pac­er, bagged four wick­ets for 33 runs, the sec­ond-best ever haul by a debu­tant play­er in the CPL, as the Zouks were re­strict­ed to 139 for nine in their 20 overs.

Lewis, back af­ter miss­ing out the last game against the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors af­ter pick­ing up an in­jury dur­ing warm-ups, blast­ed a 30-ball 65 as the Pa­tri­ots chased down the tar­get in­side 15 overs.

The vic­to­ry pushed the Pa­tri­ots to four points and third on the six-team ta­ble be­hind joint lead­ers Ama­zon War­riors and the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers, who each have eight points and are yet to taste de­feat this sea­son. Zouks, Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents and the Ja­maica Tallawahs, who won their first match of the tour­na­ment in the first of two match­es on Sun­day, are tan­gled on two points each in the bot­tom half of the ta­ble.

How­ev­er, Pa­tri­ots have al­ready played six match­es and will have to con­tin­ue their form in their re­main match­es to en­sure they get in­to the play­offs. They next wel­come TKR on Tues­day at the same venue.

Un­der pres­sure to se­cure full points on Sun­day night, Jor­dan gave the home side a bril­liant start when he re­moved Zouks open­ers An­dre Fletch­er (1) and the dan­ger­ous and in-form Rakheem Corn­wall with on­ly 14 runs on the score­board. He got Fletch­er to cut a short and wide de­liv­ery straight to Fabi­an Allen at back­ward point off his third of­fi­cial ball, hav­ing bowled a wide on his sec­ond ball. He re­turned in his sec­ond over to get the prized wick­et of Corn­wall for just five. Hav­ing been blast­ed by Corn­wall over mid-off from his first ball, Jor­dan bowled the next de­liv­ery a lit­tle wider and Corn­wall sliced his shot straight to Shel­don Cot­trell at third man.

Jor­dan's third over al­so pro­duced a wick­et al­though he was hit for two con­sec­u­tive fours by Kavem Hodge. Hodge got car­ried away by the ear­ly bound­ary suc­cess­es and charged Jor­dan's fourth ball but holed out to Kjorn Ot­t­ley at deep mid-wick­et as Zouks crum­bled to 33 for three in­side the Pow­er­play.

With their key top-or­der bats­men back in the pavil­ion ear­ly, the oth­er Zouks play­ers strug­gled to find runs and in be­tween Jor­dan's ini­tial burst, Us­ama Mir re­moved Roland Cato (10) and Col­in de Grand­homme (30) to keep the pres­sure on.

Jor­dan then re­turned for his fi­nal over to re­move Kesrick Williams for a duck, caught be­hind the wick­et, al­though he had keep­er De­von Thomas' bril­liant div­ing catch to thank for it.

When Pa­tri­ots took the field, Lewis showed he was in a no-non­sense mode by blast­ing his sec­ond CPL half-cen­tu­ry. His five fours and six six­es, along­side part­ner­ships of 45 with Eng­land's Lau­rie Evans and 62 with Mo­hammed Hafeez (26), made up for the ear­ly loss of his open­ing part­ner De­von Thomas for just one.

Along the way, Lewis be­came the sec­ond play­er to hit 100 CPL six­es, join­ing Ja­maica Tallawahs' Chris Gayle (160) in that il­lus­tri­ous cat­e­go­ry. Spin­ner Kavem Hodge even­tu­al­ly dis­missed Lewis as he tried to clear the deep mid-wick­et bound­ary with a slog sweep but couldn't get it over Roland Cato with the score on 118.

By that time, how­ev­er, the match was long done as a con­test and it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore Brath­waite wrapped up the win in style with a tow­er­ing six out the ground off pac­er Obed Mc­Coy with 31 balls to spare.

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

ST LU­CIA ZOUKS 138-9 (20) (Col­in de Grand­homme 30, Hardus Viljoen 28; Akeem Jor­dan 4-33, Us­ama Mir 2-13, Rayad Em­rit 2-29) v ST KITTS NEVIS PA­TRI­OTS 143-4 (20) (Evin Lewis 65, Mo­hammed Hafeez 26)

Re­sult: Pa­tri­ots won by six wick­ets

MoM: Akeem Jor­dan (STKNP)