The Trin­ba­go Knights are in­to Thurs­day's ti­tle-match of the Hero CPL for the third time in four years, af­ter they whipped the Ja­maica Tallawahs by nine wick­ets at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day.

The dif­fer­ence in the qual­i­ty of both teams is as great as the dif­fer­ence be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica and it showed on the day. a pal­try em­bar­rass­ing 107/7 was all the Tallawahs could have mus­tered on a pitch that al­though on the slow side held no demons. A bat­ting blue­print was nev­er pro­duced they fell like a pack of cards.

Akeal Ho­sein laid the plat­form for TKR’s 11th straight win when he snatched three wick­ets for 14 runs with his left-arm spin to re­strict Tallawahs to a mea­gre 107 off their 20 overs.

The un­beat­en TKR af­ter 11 match­es, made no fuss in get­ting the runs as they reached the tar­get in just 15 overs with one wick­et down.

Lendl Sim­mons who start­ed the se­ries slow­ly con­tin­ues his rise as he struck a mas­ter­ful 54 not out off 44 balls with two six­es and four fours. Af­ter the ear­ly fall of Sunil Nar­ine, fel­low Parkite Tion Web­ster came in and con­tin­ued to ad­ver­tise his wares as he re­mained un­beat­en on 44 off 43 balls with one six and six fours.

Pol­lard won the toss and with the pitch be­ing an un­known (used for the first time sea­son) he de­cid­ed to bowl first. "Let's see how it plays," he said. His de­ci­sion was vin­di­cat­ed af­ter just four balls as Akeal Ho­sein sent back in­form bats­man Jer­maine Black­wood. Spin twin Khary Pierre then grabbed the dan­ger­ous Glenn Phillips in the next over and it went down­hill from there.

The biggest blow to the Tallawahs, how­ev­er, came from um­pire Nigel Duguid who gave the bat­ting su­per­star An­dre Rus­sell out. Rus­sell danced down the track and Sunil Nar­ine clev­er­ly ad­just­ed by drag­ging the length back frac­tion­al­ly on the mid­dle stump. He pushed for­ward and the ball bal­looned off the top of the pad flap to Bra­vo at slip. Re­plays show the ball clear­ly hit the pad with no bat or glove in­volved. Nkrummah Bon­ner bat­ted around the mess and scored a fine 41 as if to sug­gest what all the fuss was about. He faced 42 balls and struck five fours. Skip­per Rov­man Pow­ell notched a con­trolled 33 off 35 balls.

Ho­sein was the star with the ball tak­ing 3/14 off his four overs, while Pierre had 2/29.

Pol­lard speak­ing at the end of the game said: "Get­ting this far now, there's still a big pic­ture which is on Thurs­day. We have to keep it lev­el, en­joy our vic­to­ry as we've been do­ing all tour­na­ment but still come back Thurs­day and play a bet­ter game than we did to­day."

Pol­lard said that tak­ing pace off the ball worked fine against the Tallawahs.

"When you look at their line­up, it's all bats­men who like the ball com­ing on­to the bat. The pitch­es here in the Caribbean these days give nat­ur­al vari­a­tions and they have to man­u­fac­ture shots. Hence the rea­son why you saw 16 overs of spin bowl­ing to­day."

He was very hap­py with the per­for­mance of man of the match Akeal Ho­sein. "Some­times you need to just sit back and watch these guys. Akeal has been around a very long time. It's good to see these guys us­ing their tal­ent and com­ing on­to the in­ter­na­tion­al scene and show­ing the world what they can do. Com­ing in­to this tour­na­ment, he didn't start the tour­na­ment and he was de­ject­ed, but know­ing full well what his role was go­ing to be. He has come in and tak­en his op­por­tu­ni­ty and con­tin­ues every game to im­prove. We haven't seen the oth­er side of him. I think he's a bet­ter bats­man than a bowler."

SCORES: Ja­maica Tallawahs 107/7 (20)(Nkrummah Bon­ner 41, Rov­man Pow­ell 35, Akeal Ho­sein 3/14, Khary Pierre 2/29) vs 111/1 (15)(Lendl Sim­mons 54no, Tion Web­ster 44no) - TKR won by 9 wk­ts.

Man of the match: Akeal Ho­sein.