Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard be­lieves their cru­cial win in last Sun­day’s Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League play­off match against the St Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots could be the turn­ing point for his side as they head in­to to­mor­row’s mas­sive se­mi-fi­nal against archri­vals Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents.

The two-time reign­ing cham­pi­ons en­tered the con­test against the Pa­tri­ots on the back of four straight de­feats and with­out a vic­to­ry in six match­es but man­aged to break the los­ing streak by chas­ing down 126 to win by six wick­ets at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Prov­i­dence.

“I’m hop­ing this can be the turn­around. We have a cou­ple of days [rest], we go back in front of our home crowd and that will spur us on even more,” said Pol­lard, look­ing ahead to the en­counter at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba.

“There is al­ways room for im­prove­ment – [there were] a cou­ple of blem­ish­es in the field [so] that is some­thing we need to speak about. Every run and every bound­ary saved is cru­cial for us, so that is some­thing we will have a con­ver­sa­tion about.”

TKR will be bid­ding for a place in Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal against the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, who played un­beat­en in the league phase to win all 10 match­es and top the stand­ings be­fore stop­ping the Tri­dents in the first qual­i­fi­er by 30 runs.

How­ev­er, TKR will have to break this sea­son’s jinx against Tri­dents, who beat them in both their clash­es this sea­son.

Pol­lard, who as­sumed the cap­tain­cy this cam­paign from in­jured all-rounder Dwayne Bra­vo, said it was im­por­tant to find the right bal­ance for the crit­i­cal match.

“Win­ning the toss where the wick­ets looked a bit tacky, our spin­ners bowled mag­nif­i­cent­ly well [against Tri­dents],” Pol­lard ex­plained.

“Go­ing to Trinidad might be dif­fer­ent but we’re gonna come up with the best com­bi­na­tion to win. That’s all we’ve been try­ing to do. We’ve been try­ing things. It’s bet­ter to try and fail than fail to try. We got a lot of licks for it but we con­tin­ue to take it be­cause our backs are broad and we crack on.”

Pol­lard said TKR’s bat­ting need­ed to pull their weight, how­ev­er, as ev­i­denced by their strug­gles chas­ing the Pa­tri­ots’ mea­gre 125 for sev­en.

TKR found them­selves in trou­ble at 31 for three in the sixth over be­fore re­cov­er­ing through open­er Lendl Sim­mons’ 51 and an un­bro­ken fifth-wick­et stand of 50 be­tween De­nesh Ramdin (32 not out) and Pol­lard (26 not out).

“I can’t fault the guys at the halfway stage. One hun­dred and twen­ty-five – if you turn up at any ground and lim­it the op­po­si­tion [to that], you’ll take that ten out of ten,” he con­tend­ed.

“At the halfway [stage] we thought we were right in­to it but it got a lit­tle too close for com­fort.”(CMC)