An up­set Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard said on Thurs­day night that his team de­served to lose against the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents in the semi­fi­nal of the Hero CPL T20 tour­na­ment at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.

The TKR's dreams of a three-peat of ti­tles im­plod­ed af­ter a 12-run loss to the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents in front of a home crowd of an es­ti­mat­ed 9,000. The Tri­dents will now play the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors in the cham­pi­onship match to­day from 5 pm at the same venue.

On Thurs­day, the Tri­dents ar­rived at the ground an hour and 15 min­utes late due to traf­fic con­ges­tion caused by the heavy rain that af­fect­ed the north­ern part of the coun­try from ear­ly af­ter­noon in­to the late evening.

Af­ter win­ning the toss, Pol­lard asked the vis­i­tors to bat first and they tal­lied 160-5 af­ter be­ing 109-5 af­ter 17 overs be­fore re­strict­ing TKR to 148 all out in the fi­nal over.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Pol­lard dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the de­lay in the start time may have led to their de­feat.

“We're not go­ing to use that as an ex­cuse. At the end of the day, we came out and we got a full 40 overs of crick­et and the Tri­dents were tri­umphant and we wish them luck in the fi­nal," Pol­lard said.

"Hav­ing said that, when you look at our per­for­mance through­out the sea­son, I think we de­served to lose this game tonight. You can't turn up in a semi­fi­nal and drop catch­es like that, sim­ple er­rors, and not ex­e­cute in a big game like that. It cost us in the end.”

With Sri Lankan Seekuge Prasan­na hit­ting the ball well at one stage and get­ting to a half-cen­tu­ry (51), the home team was well in the game with Pol­lard at the crease with him. How­ev­er, a cru­cial run out led to a col­lapse and in the end the even­tu­al de­feat.

But Pol­lard made no ex­cus­es for the loss or their per­for­mances over the course of this sea­son.

“It was cru­cial when I got run out but go­ing back to how our tour­na­ment has been, we don't de­serve to be in the fi­nal if we're hon­est with our­selves," a stern Pol­lard said.

"A lot of us in the dress­ing room have to go back and look at our in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances and see if we have done the team jus­tice. It's a mat­ter of go­ing back to the draw­ing board and see­ing where we need to im­prove as a team and not just think­ing you have the best team on pa­per."

Mean­while, man-of-the-match Ash­ley Nurse’s in­ter­ven­tion was cru­cial in both in­nings, first when blast­ing an un­beat­en 24 from nine balls to pro­pel a stut­ter­ing Tri­dents in­nings up to 160-6 and then tak­ing two key wick­ets to help stran­gle the Knight Rid­ers’ run-chase.

Hav­ing been put in to bat, the Tri­dents looked set to make an un­der-par to­tal for the ma­jor­i­ty of their in­nings un­til Nurse and Ray­mon Reifer – who lat­er al­so played his part with the ball bowl­ing a nerve­less fi­nal over that in­clud­ed the vi­tal wick­et of Prasan­na and the match-clinch­ing one of Khary Pierre – plun­dered an un­bro­ken 48 runs for the sev­enth wick­et from the fi­nal 14 balls.

With the Knight Rid­ers ul­ti­mate­ly com­ing up 12 runs short, the fi­nal two overs when the Tri­dents bat­ted were the dif­fer­ence be­tween go­ing in­to Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal and go­ing home.

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

BAR­BA­DOS TRI­DENTS 160-6 (20) (John­son Charles 35, Ray­mon Reifer 24*, Ash­ley Nurse 24*, Shai Hope 23, Khary Pierre 2/25, Ali Khan 2/36, Chris Jor­dan 2/40) v TRIN­BA­GO KNIGHT RID­ERS 148 all out (19.3) (Seekkuge Pras­sana 51, Kieron Pol­lard 23, De­nesh Ramdin 21, Ash­ley Nurse 2/14, Ray­mon Reifer 2/13, Hay­den Walsh Jr 2/33, Har­ry Gur­ney 2/31)

Re­sult: BAR­BA­DOS TRI­DENTS WON BY 12 RUNS

Man-of-the-match: ASH­LEY NURSE (BT)