GYASI MER­RIQUE

Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers fans have been left dis­ap­point­ed and with a sour taste in their mouths, af­ter their team was elim­i­nat­ed from the 2024 Re­pub­lic Bank Caribbean Pre­mier League tour­na­ment in con­tro­ver­sial fash­ion on Tues­day night.

The elim­i­na­tor match be­tween TKR and the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als was in­ter­rupt­ed af­ter three flood­light tow­ers went out at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um in Guyana near the end of TKR’s in­nings, and Roy­als even­tu­al­ly chased down a re­vised score of 60 in five overs via the Duck­worth-Lewis-Stein method.

A 17-ball half-cen­tu­ry blitz from David Miller (50 not out) got Roy­als com­fort­ably to 64 for one. The nine-wick­et win by the two-time cham­pi­ons bought them at least one more match in this year’s tour­na­ment and elim­i­nat­ed TKR.

The re­sult did not go down well with TKR fans, with sev­er­al tak­ing to so­cial me­dia ex­press­ing the view that there was a con­spir­a­cy to elim­i­nate TKR, in­clud­ing sug­ges­tions of sab­o­tage of the light­ing sys­tem. Even TKR all-rounder An­dre Rus­sell took to so­cial me­dia with an ex­ple­tive-filled com­ment on the un­fair­ness of the re­sult. (See oth­er sto­ry)

In his post, Rus­sell ques­tioned the se­quence of events lead­ing up to the game’s con­tin­u­a­tion in con­di­tions that he felt took an ad­van­tage away from the team bat­ting first and hand­ed it to the Roy­als.

In the post, Rus­sell said, “I am not the per­son to come out on the In­ter­net and voice my opin­ion, but this year, CPL, I feel robbed of this light sit­u­a­tion.”

Com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, crick­et an­a­lyst and for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go play­er An­dre Lawrence said, “For it to hap­pen in an elim­i­na­tor is very, very un­for­tu­nate and prob­a­bly goes be­yond the thought of it be­ing just un­for­tu­nate. It’s not the way that any tour­na­ment would like to have to get a re­sult from a game, but I imag­ine that it’s in the rules and reg­u­la­tions of the game.

“And I think that it reach­es so far as to say that there should be a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion just to make sure that there wasn’t any­thing un­der­hand­ed about it.”

He added, “Cir­cum­stances like this very rarely hap­pen, and maybe there is some­thing that can be looked at. But this doesn’t seem right, and it prob­a­bly tar­nish­es the Caribbean brand just a bit.”

How­ev­er, Lawrence was able to find a philo­soph­i­cal out­look.

“Some­times you have to look at the good in every­thing. While it’s not the best sce­nario, it gives the Caribbean Pre­mier League hi­er­ar­chy the op­por­tu­ni­ty to look at things like venues and rules go­ing for­ward. And when I say venues, there’s ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong with Prov­i­dence or play­ing crick­et in Guyana, but it is not out of whack to know that they do get pow­er out­ages dur­ing the day; that’s the re­al­i­ty of things.

“This is the first time this has hap­pened in Guyana, and it’s not the first time they have had the fi­nals week there, but it has hap­pened now, so cer­tain­ly the pow­ers that be in Guyana have to take a much clos­er look at that.”

Al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who has made no se­cret of his love for the game and the CPL in the past, stat­ed on­ly, “I heard that se­nior play­ers have spo­ken, so there is noth­ing for me to add.”

Dr Row­ley was pre­sum­ably re­fer­ring to pub­lic state­ments made by TKR cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard as the so­cial me­dia post by Rus­sell.

Speak­ing dur­ing the game’s post-match tele­vised in­ter­view, how­ev­er, Pol­lard did not seem dis­turbed about what tran­spired, stat­ing sim­ply that he and his team un­der­stood the un­cer­tain­ties of sport.

Pol­lard said, “You pre­pare for any cir­cum­stances. If rain had fall­en or some­thing like that, it would have been the same sort of in­stance where you have to gear up and be pre­pared to play. Once the lights were on, we were al­ways ready to play with­in the rules and reg­u­la­tions of the game.”

He added, “We saw the class of Nicky P (Nicholas Pooran) to­day again, bat­ting on a tough wick­et, get­ting us to a de­cent to­tal at that point with four of five overs to go. It was al­ways go­ing to be dif­fi­cult for Bar­ba­dos to chase that, but in the cir­cum­stances, cer­tain things hap­pened that we have no con­trol over.”

Mean­while, Roy­als cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell in­ti­mat­ed that luck was on his team’s side.

“I think it’s a case of us get­ting lucky tonight, to be hon­est,” he said.

“At one point, we thought we were out of the com­pe­ti­tion once the lights start­ed giv­ing prob­lems. It’s un­for­tu­nate that the lights went off, or it would have been a beau­ti­ful crick­et. It’s just un­for­tu­nate for a good TKR team to be on the wrong side of luck tonight.”

DLS method used af­ter two-hour de­lay

As the sce­nario un­fold­ed dur­ing the two-hour de­lay and even long af­ter the re­sult, crick­et fans took to so­cial me­dia to voice their dis­ap­point­ment in the se­ries of events.

As the min­utes raced away, view­ers were quite lit­er­al­ly left in the dark about what was hap­pen­ing at the venue. Anx­ious fans be­gan to spec­u­late about the rea­sons for the out­age and the pos­si­ble out­come of the match.

Then, at al­most the same time that the CPL’s live broad­cast re­sumed with com­men­ta­tors con­firm­ing that play would be able to re­sume but that the con­di­tions of the match would be dras­ti­cal­ly al­tered, a joint me­dia re­lease from Guyana’s Min­istry of Cul­ture, Youth, and Sport and Guyana Pow­er and Light In­cor­po­rat­ed (GLP) de­clared that “all CPL match­es at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um, Guyana, were suc­cess­ful­ly pow­ered from in­de­pen­dent gen­er­at­ing sets lo­cat­ed in the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um and not by the GPL’s grid. The GPL has been on stand­by at all match­es to ren­der tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to the sta­di­um at all times.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued, “Dur­ing the nine­teenth over, three (3) flood­lights that were pow­ered by an in­de­pen­dent gen­er­a­tor lost pow­er, thus caus­ing a dis­rup­tion to the match. GPL’s tech­ni­cal team on stand­by im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan ren­der­ing as­sis­tance and re­stored pow­er to two of three flood­lights on the same cir­cuit. The sta­di­um’s tech­ni­cal staff and GPL worked as­sid­u­ous­ly to re­store pow­er to the third flood­light, which had a tech­ni­cal fault with the un­der­ground ca­ble feed­ing pow­er to that flood­light. A sub­sti­tute ca­ble was in­stalled quick­ly to have this flood­light op­er­a­tional. This was achieved at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10.51 pm when the tech­ni­cal team reme­died the prob­lem and the game re­sumed.”

Mean­while, in a me­dia re­lease late last evening, the CPL mere­ly con­firmed the in­ci­dent at the venue, say­ing the um­pires Deighton But­ler and Nigel Duguid ini­tial­ly ruled the venue un­fit for play to con­tin­ue, be­fore the re­turn of the flood­lights al­lowed the game to con­tin­ue un­der the DLS method, which it said was the uni­ver­sal­ly ac­cept­ed method used to de­ter­mine re­vised tar­gets in an in­ter­rupt­ed game.

Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the pub­lic were still dis­sat­is­fied with what tran­spired.

One cit­i­zen said, “I find they should do it over and start over from scratch be­cause that wasn’t a fair match. I feel some­thing like a sab­o­tage went on.”

An­oth­er opined, “I think so (the match should be played over be­cause that is wrong what they did.”