SPORTS DESK

gm­sports@guardian.co.tt

Pre-tour­na­ment favourite Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) will take on Bar­ba­dos Roy­als (BR) to open the St Lu­cia leg in the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) to­day.

The teams will meet at the Daren Sam­my Na­tion­al Crick­et Sta­di­um in Gros Islet, from 10 am, in match eight on the 10th an­niver­sary of the T20 com­pe­ti­tion.

The Knight Rid­ers will be re­in­forced by the ar­rival of Col­in Munro, from the Hun­dred, for the sec­ond leg of the CPL in St Lu­cia. He will be among the bat­ters to watch along with ex­plo­sive skip­per Kieron Pol­lard.

Among the bowlers will be Akeal Ho­sein, once healthy will be looked to, to make an im­pact against the Bar­ba­dos fran­chise as he did in TKR’s first win. He emerged “Play­er of the Match” for his bril­liant bound­ary-less bowl­ing spell which saw the Knight Rid­ers kick off their cam­paign with a vic­to­ry over last year’s fi­nal­ists, St Lu­cia Kings (SLK), by three wick­ets on Thurs­day.

TKR won the toss and chose to field, Ho­sein, tak­ing fre­quent wick­ets to re­strict Kings to 143/9, de­spite some big hit­ting from bat­ter Roshon Primus to­wards the end of the in­nings.

The Knight Rid­ers got off to a tough start them­selves, los­ing two ear­ly wick­ets be­fore a com­mand­ing in­nings from Tion Web­ster (58) helped to guide them to vic­to­ry with four balls to spare.  

Af­ter end­ing his shift with the ball, Ho­sein, though, suf­fered an in­jury scare when he dived to his right from mid-off and land­ed awk­ward­ly. Ho­sein im­me­di­ate­ly hob­bled off the field and sat out of Knight Rid­ers’ next game against St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots (SKNP), which due to rain, end­ed in a no re­sult with­out a ball be­ing bowled. Ac­cord­ing to team cap­tain Pol­lard, Ho­sein had twinged his leg and was rest­ed to re­cov­er.

The Knight Rid­ers sit in third place with three points af­ter the first leg of the CPL at Warn­er Park in Bas­seterre, St Kitts and Nevis last week in­to the week­end.

Mean­while, David Miller’s new-look Roy­als have made a dream start, notch­ing up two wins in as many match­es.

West In­dies open­er Kyle May­ers has been the star for Roy­als so far. In their first match of the sea­son, against Pa­tri­ots, he slammed 73 off 46 balls as Roy­als chased down 150 t win by sev­en wick­ets. Their South African im­port Corbin Bosch al­so con­tributed hand­some­ly to the open­ing vic­to­ry by tak­ing five catch­es - a CPL record.

Against St Lu­cia Kings, May­ers sparkled with both bat and ball. Af­ter hit­ting 36 off 23 balls that helped Roy­als to 162 for 7, he ripped through the op­po­si­tion’s top or­der with four wick­ets in two overs. May­ers, who had start­ed his ca­reer as a new-ball bowler be­fore an an­kle in­jury forced him to re­mod­el him­self in­to a bat­ting all­rounder, pro­duced the in­swing of old, york­ing Ros­ton Chase and John­son Charles. May­ers al­so got rid of Mark Deyal and Primus, en­sur­ing there would be no way back for Kings, de­spite Faf du Plessis’ un­beat­en 47 off 20 balls in a rain-hit game.

A win to­day by ei­ther TKR or Roy­als, will move them to the top of the six-team ta­ble ahead of the Ja­maica Tallawahs (JT), who have set the ear­ly pace in the CPL.

Rov­man Pow­ell’s Tallawahs have dashed out of the blocks, al­so notch­ing up two wins in as many games, for four points same as Roy­als but the Ja­maican fran­chise has a bet­ter net run rate (NRR) of 1.338 com­pared to Bar­ba­dos’ 1.197.

In the sea­son open­er, Bran­don King, who had pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, marked his re­turn to his home fran­chise - Tallawahs - with a fiery 57-ball 89 that set up a 47-run vic­to­ry against the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Pa­tri­ots. In Tallawahs’ sec­ond match, they beat Ama­zon War­riors by four wick­ets.

In to­day’s late match, the un­beat­en Tallawahs will take on the win­less Kings from 7 pm.