The sur­prise pack­age and dark horse, the St Lu­cia Kings (SLK), gal­loped away with this year’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) ti­tle, al­most like a thief in the night.

This is a team that lost their fi­nal group game to the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (GAW) by 35 runs. They were al­so ham­mered in match num­ber 10 by the same GAW, af­ter be­ing bowled out for 100 and the GAW won the game by six wick­ets with ten overs to spare. A team that had been all but writ­ten off, ral­lied ma­jes­ti­cal­ly and won four of their last five games, with their dra­mat­ic resur­gence be­ing a re­minder of just how un­pre­dictable crick­et can be.

I al­ways had them to get in­to the play­offs, but I felt the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) and the GAW would have been too strong for them (even though they eas­i­ly de­feat­ed TKR in game num­ber 26 played in Tarou­ba). It was a plot twist that even the most sea­soned crick­et fans didn't see com­ing.

The play­offs nev­er met the ex­pec­ta­tions of good, tight crick­et which could have gone ei­ther way. The Elim­i­na­tor match be­tween TKR and the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als (BR) was ab­surd and the on­ly thing miss­ing was a co­me­di­an telling jokes dur­ing the ‘lights break’ be­cause what fol­lowed was a piece of non­sense that looked like Lewis Hamil­ton dri­ving a Corti­na in a For­mu­la 1 race. It was a clas­sic case of "all the world's a stage", and the sta­di­um was the star of the show, or the “Man of the Match” as Ja­son Hold­er right­ful­ly re­ferred to the lights at Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um in Guyana.

TKR and their loy­al fans must feel ag­griev­ed. How can any­one with good crick­et­ing sense come up with the de­ci­sion to play re­duced overs is be­yond me. Now, I know some will point out that the of­fi­cials had to go by the rule book and there was no al­ter­na­tive but to adopt the de­ci­sion that was tak­en, but this was a glar­ing ex­am­ple of the rigid­i­ty of the of­fi­cials and crick­et's rule­book trump­ing com­mon sense. Some will say that if the shoe was on the oth­er foot, TKR would have tak­en it. I con­cur that TKR lost the game ac­cord­ing to the rules fair and square but rules are there as a guide­line and sure­ly, some­body, some­where with an ounce of com­mon sense would have asked, “We are here to play crick­et, is there an al­ter­na­tive?”

While the of­fi­cials were un­doubt­ed­ly fol­low­ing the let­ter of the law, the spir­it of the game was ut­ter­ly dis­re­gard­ed. A lit­tle flex­i­bil­i­ty should have been con­sid­ered in a high-stakes play­off match where points are ir­rel­e­vant and one team is elim­i­nat­ed. Since this was a case of no rain (I am aware that fail­ure of flood­lights is treat­ed in the same way as an in­ter­rup­tion for rain) and the play­ing sur­face was in ex­cel­lent con­di­tion, why couldn’t the two cap­tains be brought to­geth­er and dis­cuss a re­sump­tion of play once the lights were re­stored and played to a fin­ish? In such ex­tra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, did it mat­ter if the game was played in its en­tire­ty and fin­ished at 1:00 am or 2:00 am to en­sure a fair out­come?

Again, I make the point that the out­come of the game af­fect­ed no oth­er team but most of the time, of­fi­cials are blind­ed by the rules as op­posed to what is best for the game. Even though the Duck­worth-Lewis sys­tem was cor­rect in its fig­ures of giv­ing the BR the ‘oh-so-dif­fi­cult’ task of get­ting 60 runs in five overs with all ten wick­ets in hand, cou­pled with the first two overs be­ing pow­er­play overs, the out­come was a fore­gone con­clu­sion. TKR had as much chance of win­ning that game as a fish does at rid­ing a bi­cy­cle.

I have since seen all over so­cial me­dia TKR fans say­ing it was a set-up and sab­o­tage. While I don't sub­scribe to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, I do blame the pow­ers that be at Prov­i­dence. I am no elec­tri­cal ex­pert, but sure­ly with the start of the play­offs, all nec­es­sary equip­ment in­clud­ing lights, light­ing tow­ers switch­es, etc. should have been checked and rechecked, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the lights went out in sim­i­lar fash­ion at pre­vi­ous sport­ing events held at the Prov­i­dence sta­di­um (three times this has hap­pened be­fore at this very same sta­di­um). With am­ple time to pre­pare for the play­offs, it is baf­fling that ba­sic equip­ment checks were not con­duct­ed. The pow­er out­age, while un­for­tu­nate, was en­tire­ly avoid­able and the au­thor­i­ties could have saved them­selves the em­bar­rass­ment. I sup­pose it could be linked to a car bat­tery just go­ing dead and there is noth­ing that could have been done.

An­oth­er ques­tion is, was it that bad of a prob­lem that it took three hours and was fixed just one minute be­fore the cut-off time? No won­der TKR fans were seething. The fail­ure of the sta­di­um's light­ing sys­tem, de­spite pre­vi­ous warn­ings, was a glar­ing over­sight that cast a shad­ow over the tour­na­ment's cred­i­bil­i­ty. The en­tire in­ci­dent stinks from the high­est but a lit­tle bit of com­mon sense and di­a­logue could have re­sult­ed in an out­come palat­able to all and sundry (ex­cept the of­fi­cials and BR).

On the crick­et­ing front, the BR were nev­er a match for the GAW (who sur­pris­ing­ly lost to the SLK in Qual­i­fi­er 1) and once de Kock on­ly mus­tered 15, the writ­ing was on the wall. Rah­man­ul­lah Gur­baz, Moeen Ali and Shai Hope took them apart and, as ex­pect­ed, GAW cruised in­to the fi­nal to once again play SLK.

And what a fi­nal it was! SLK, through the hard­work­ing Khary Pierre, land­ed the first blow in the first over when he got rid of the dan­ger­ous Gur­baz and GAW lost their way from there. At 97 for sev­en with 17 balls left, the feel­ing was that if GAW could score 125, they would have done well. But, through Ro­mario Shep­herd and Dwain Pre­to­rius, they belt­ed 37 runs in 16 balls to even­tu­al­ly fin­ish on 138 for 8, hop­ing that the to­tal would be com­pet­i­tive. Not on­ly was it com­pet­i­tive, but with Faf du Plessis and John­son Charles back in the dugout and with Ros­ton Chase and Aaron Jones need­ing 66 runs from 30 balls at a re­quired run rate of 13.20, some­body from the dugout told Jones and Chase that it was time to change gears. They some­how went from first gear in­to over­drive and the next 2 overs went for 47 runs and the match was as good as over. What a fan­tas­tic fi­nal!

Con­grats to the SLK, wor­thy cham­pi­ons. I said many times that Faf du Plessis is the best cap­tain in the tour­na­ment. His de­meanour is calm and he seems to have a great rap­port with his play­ers and you could see them want­i­ng to play for him. It was tru­ly a team ef­fort but Noor Ahmed was bril­liant through­out the CPL. Let us hope the re­gion­al boards are try­ing to find a good left-arm un­ortho­dox and a good leg spin­ner to get in­to the re­gion­al teams, as both those types of bowlers are bad­ly lack­ing in re­gion­al crick­et.

This year’s CPL turned out to be one of the most com­pet­i­tive ever. In ad­di­tion to look­ing at the rules (es­pe­cial­ly with the play­offs for in­ci­dents out­side of rain in­ter­rup­tions), the or­gan­is­ers have to find two more fran­chis­es to make the com­pe­ti­tion even more com­pet­i­tive go­ing for­ward. This would not on­ly in­crease the depth of tal­ent but al­so pro­vide more op­por­tu­ni­ties for emerg­ing play­ers.

Be­fore clos­ing, my pet peeve is with this “um­pires call”. When will that non­sense stop? If the ball is hit­ting any part of the stumps from Hawk­eye's view, the bats­man is out ex­cept if the um­pire says not out. If how­ev­er, the um­pire had giv­en the bats­man out, he is out. It's a rule that seems to ex­ist sole­ly to add an ex­tra lay­er of dra­ma and un­cer­tain­ty to the game. Per­haps it's time for a new rule: "If Hawk­eye says it's out, it's out, full stop”. Fig­ure that non­sense out!

The 2024 CPL was a sea­son filled with sur­pris­es, dra­ma, and a healthy dose of tal­ent. While the of­fi­cials may need to loosen up a bit and the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um might need a new set of lights and elec­tri­cal equip­ment, the tour­na­ment over­all was a re­sound­ing suc­cess. The St Lu­cia Kings' tri­umph was a fit­ting end to a sea­son that will be re­mem­bered for its un­pre­dictable na­ture and the un­for­get­table mo­ments it pro­duced. And who knows, maybe next year we'll see even more un­ex­pect­ed twists and turns. I sup­pose with that, it's ‘lights out’ for us all and this year’s CPL.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.