Kea­cy Car­ty and Alex Hales scored half-cen­turies to lead the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers to a com­fort­able eight-wick­et vic­to­ry over the streaky An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons on Wednes­day in the Re­pub­lic Bank Caribbean Pre­mier League.

Car­ty scored 60, while Hales struck an un­beat­en 55, as the Knight Rid­ers cruised to 152 for two in 18.4 overs, eas­i­ly over­haul­ing the Fal­cons’ to­tal of 146 for sev­en af­ter they were sent in to bat at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.

It was the third win in four match­es for the Knight Rid­ers and pro­pelled them to sec­ond place in the stand­ings on six points, while the Fal­cons re­mained in first po­si­tion on sev­en points, hav­ing played sev­en games.

Chas­ing a be­low-par to­tal, Hales and Car­ty added 87 runs for the sec­ond wick­et in 12 overs af­ter the Knight Rid­ers lost Col­in Munro cheap­ly with 27 runs on the board.

While they did not score in bound­aries, the pair kept the score­board tick­ing over with sen­si­ble bat­ting and speedy run­ning be­tween the wick­ets.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Car­ty brought up his half-cen­tu­ry off 36 balls with a thun­der­ous six over long on off the bowl­ing of Kari­ma Gore.

But af­ter hit­ting pac­er Jay­den Seales through back­ward point for four, Car­ty chopped the next de­liv­ery on­to his stumps af­ter fac­ing 45 balls and hit­ting four fours and two six­es.

Hales then reached his half-cen­tu­ry off 43 balls, al­so with a bound­ary, this time swing­ing Salman Ir­shad be­hind fine leg for four.

To­geth­er with cap­tain Nicholas Pooran, who scored an un­beat­en 23 off 11 balls, they shared an un­bro­ken part­ner­ship of 38 to guide the Knight Rid­ers to vic­to­ry with eight balls to spare.

Ear­li­er, Play­er-of-the-Match Mo­ham­mad Amir snagged three wick­ets to un­der­mine the Fal­cons’ bat­ting ef­forts.

The Fal­cons en­dured a night­mare start, with Amir trap­ping both open­ers, Rah­keem Corn­wall and Gore, lbw for ducks in the first over, to leave them nought for two.

And lat­er on, they lost the wick­ets of Shak­ib Al Hasan, Jew­el An­drew, who top­scored with 40, and Fabi­an Allen, with­out the ad­di­tion of a run, to slump to 71 for six.

Cap­tain Imad Wasim hit an un­beat­en 37 off 25 balls, while Us­ama Mir made 34 from 26 balls, to help get them up to their even­tu­al to­tal.

Amir fin­ished with 3-22, An­dre Rus­sell took 2-23 and Akeal Ho­sein 2-25 for the Knight Rid­ers.

CMC

Sum­marised scores

AN­TIGUA & BAR­BU­DA FAL­CONS 146-7 in 20 overs (Jew­el An­drew 40, Imad Wasim 37 not out, Us­ama Mir 34; Mo­ham­mad Amir 3-22) vs TKR 152-2 in 18.4 overs (Kea­cy Car­ty 60, Alex Hales 55 not out, Nicholas Pooran 23 not out). TKR won by eight wick­ets.

CMC