Mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine played through in­jury to pro­duce a miser­ly spell while the in-form Lendl Sim­mons hit a half-cen­tu­ry to steer the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers past the St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots by six wick­ets in the first Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League Elim­i­na­tor at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um in Guyana on Sun­day.

Man-of-the-match Nar­ine took two wick­ets for just 10 runs as TKR first re­strict­ed the Pa­tri­ots to 125-7 be­fore Sim­mons hit 51 as the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons reached 128-4 with six balls to spare.

TKR skip­per Kieron Pol­lard had the ho­n­our of hit­ting the win­ning runs in the penul­ti­mate over and did so with his usu­al flair against op­po­site num­ber Car­los Brath­waite - blast­ing two max­i­mums and a four to end it - as the TKR end­ed a four-match los­ing skid to earn a chance to play the los­er of the first Qual­i­fi­er be­tween the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents on Thurs­day at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba, Trinidad.

But it was Sim­mons' fight­ing half-cen­tu­ry which gave TKR, who are chas­ing a hat-trick of CPL ti­tles, the foun­da­tion to break their los­ing slump com­ing out of the round-robin se­ries. On a dif­fi­cult pitch, the usu­al­ly ag­gres­sive Sim­mons graft­ed and scratched around as he faced 47 balls and hit just three fours and three six­es in his in­nings. More im­por­tant­ly, he held the in­nings to­geth­er and shared in a vi­tal 47-run fourth-wick­et part­ner­ship with De­nesh Ramdin af­ter the Pa­tri­ots bowlers re­moved the oth­er top-or­der bats­men cheap­ly to take a sem­blance of ad­van­tage in­to the sec­ond half of the in­nings.

Pac­er Alzarri Joseph got the Pa­tri­ots off to a fly­er when he got the dan­ger­ous Nar­ine (8) to play a pull shot straight to Shel­don Cot­trell at deep square leg, as TKR's hope of a quick start end­ed at 15-1 in the sec­ond over.

Cot­trell then got the prized scalp of Col­in Munro for a duck in the next over, knock­ing over his off stump af­ter he played and missed a de­liv­ery which cut back in sharply from just out­side off stump. Rayad Emit brought more wor­ries for anx­ious TKR fans when Dar­ren Bra­vo (1) fell for an ob­vi­ous field­ing trap in the sixth over and pulled a short-pitched de­liv­ery straight in­to the hands of Cot­trell at deep square leg as TKR slumped to 31-3.

Sim­mons and Ramdin then strug­gled to get runs as TKR reached just 43-3 af­ter 10 overs. How­ev­er, they stuck it out, even when things got tense in the mid­dle be­tween them­selves and Brath­waite. All three play­ers got in­to a ver­bal al­ter­ca­tion in the 11th over af­ter Brath­waite at­tempt­ed to run out Ramdin when he felt the wick­et­keep­er went to speak to Sim­mons al­though the ball was not dead. The um­pire in­ter­vened to calm them down be­fore not­ing he had al­ready deemed the ball to be dead.

Sim­mons even­tu­al­ly got to his half-cen­tu­ry in the 16th over with a max­i­mum over long-on off Brath­waite. But in the very next ball, he went for a sim­i­lar shot and holed out to Lau­rie Evans on the long-on bound­ary. His 51 came off 47 balls and in­clud­ed three fours and three max­i­mums.

But Pol­lard then joined Ramdin and al­though the two took a while to hit their stride even­tu­al­ly got TKR home com­fort­ably enough to end their longest-ever los­ing slump.

Ear­li­er, pac­er Ali Khan opened the gates for TKR when he dis­missed Mo­ham­mad Hafeez in just the fourth over. Hafeez, ap­par­ent­ly with in­struc­tions to take on the bowlers in the Pow­er Play, came down the wick­et to the Khan, who saw him and dug in a bounc­er wide of off stump. Hafeez still tried to crack the de­liv­ery to mid-wick­et but mis­cued his shot high in­to the sky to give Akeal Ho­sein an easy catch at mid-off to be dis­missed for 11 as Pa­tri­ots found them­selves at 22-1.

Two overs lat­er, medi­um-pac­er Chris Jor­dan, hav­ing been cracked for four in the third ball of his over, knocked over Shamarh Brooks' (5) leg stump with a york­er in the next ball. The hole got a lot deep­er in the very next over when cham­pi­on spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine re­moved dan­ger­ous open­er Evin Lewis (9), who played back, was hur­ried on his shot and on­ly man­aged to present the bowler an easy caught and bowled as Pa­tri­ots slumped to 30-3.

Af­ter Lau­rie Evans and De­von Thomas shared in a mi­ni re­cov­ery of 51 runs, Nar­ine trapped Thomas plumb in front his wick­et with the last ball of his spell as Pa­tri­ots tot­tered to 81-4. Nar­ine, clear­ly play­ing through pain from the mid­dle fin­ger on his bowl­ing hand dur­ing the in­nings, still fin­ished with a miser­ly two wick­ets for 10 runs.

Evans and Braith­waite strug­gled to keep the score­board tick­ing but man­aged a 21-run part­ner­ship be­fore Braith­waite (3) lost his pa­tience and skied a Jor­dan de­liv­ery to long-on where Col­in Munro took an easy catch.

Khan, re­turn­ing for his sec­ond spell, fi­nal­ly end­ed Evans' stint at the crease when he got him to go for an ex­pan­sive dri­ve which was eas­i­ly caught on the cov­er bound­ary by Khary Pierre. Evans faced 47 balls and hit eight fours.

Jor­dan then bowled a fine last over, tak­ing the wick­et of Fabi­an Allen (6) with his first ball and get­ting just four off it to set TKR up with an easy to­tal chase.

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

ST KITTS NEVIS PA­TRI­OTS 125-7 (20) (Lau­rie Evans 55, Keron Cot­toy 14*, Chris Jor­dan 3/30, Sunil Nar­ine 2/10, Ali Khan 2/22 ) v TRIN­BA­GO KNIGHT RID­ERS 128-4 (18.4) (Lendl Sim­mons 51, De­nesh Ramdin 32*, Kieron Pol­lard 26*, Alzarri Joseph 1/17, Shel­don Cot­trell 1/29)

Re­sult: TRIN­BA­GO KNIGHT RID­ERS WON BY 6 WK­TS

Man-of-the-match: Sunil Nar­ine (TKR)

Teams:

PA­TRI­OTS: Mo­ham­mad Hafeez, Evin Lewis, Shamarh Brooks, Lau­rie Evans, De­von Thomas, Car­los Brath­waite, Fabi­an Allen, Keron Cot­toy, Rayad Em­rit, Shel­don Cot­trell, Alzarri Joseph.

TKR: Sunil Nar­ine, Lendl Sim­mons, Col­in Munro, De­nesh Ramdin, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Kieron Pol­lard, Seekkuge Prasan­na, Khary Pierre, Chris Jor­dan, Akeal Ho­sein, Ali Khan.