Skip­per Kieron Pol­lard turned in a won­der­ful all-round per­for­mance on Sat­ur­day to give his team, the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR), their ninth suc­ces­sive win at the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) tour­na­ment at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA) in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.

SCORES: Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers 175/5 (20) ver­sus St Lu­cia Zouks 152/7 - TKR won by 23 runs.

Pol­lard smacked a 21-ball 42 as the TKR tal­lied 175/5, thanks al­so to 50 from Dar­ren Bra­vo. With the Zouks will­ing to give them a tus­sle, he then took the ball to cap­ture three wick­ets and to­geth­er with the ex­pe­ri­enced Dwayne Bra­vo with 2/26, the Zouks fell short at 152/7.

Lo­cal boy Mark Deyal and An­dre Fletch­er had giv­en the TKR a slight scare as they bat­ted with in­hi­bi­tions in get­ting quick runs. How­ev­er, Pol­lard would re­move both men and the Zouks could not find the pow­er low­er down to get over the line.

Deyal made 40 off 33 balls with five fours, while the right-hand­ed Fletch­er spanked 42 off 27 balls with a four and three Hero Max­i­mums (six­es).

In the end, the moun­tain to climb was as tall as the Piton, and tried as he did, skip­per Daren Sam­my could get on­ly 14 runs and his team de­nied an up­set.

Ear­li­er, Zouks won the toss and de­cid­ed to field, a de­ci­sion that was shock­ing with this be­ing the first match of the day and the pitch of­fer­ing its best con­di­tions for stroke­play. What has been seen at the BLCA is that the bat­ting team, hav­ing first use of the strip on morn­ings, en­joy it the best.

This week, there have been morn­ing scores of 46/0 (5.4), 174/4 (20), and 184/4 (20). Mov­ing along the day, the pitch gets slow­er and low­er and this brings the spin­ners in­to play and bats­men are like fod­der.

It was no dif­fer­ent yes­ter­day as the TKR was quick out the blocks and main­tained a healthy run-rate through­out.

The ball came nice­ly off the bat and on­ly when bowlers took pace off the ball they were spared. They had to be crafty be­cause the pitch helped the bat­ters.

No bet­ter ex­am­ple came than the Lendl Sim­mons' dis­missal off Zouks Scott Kuggelei­jn. His length ball at pace when fly­ing over long-on for six. Af­ter that he rolled his fin­gers across the ball and Sim­mons was thrown off edg­ing to wick­et­keep­er An­dre Fletch­er for eight.

TKR's Tim Siefert be­ing pro­mot­ed in the or­der be­cause of fin­ger in­jury to Col­in Munro en­joyed the ex­changes thump­ing a six in his 33 off 30 balls as he en­joyed the hard­ness of the ball as well.

Bra­vo looked pret­ty as he was able to bring out all his shots much to the de­light of his team­mates. In the end, he count­ed 50 off 42 balls with three six­es and three fours.

Pol­lard was bru­tal and struck the ball clean­ly, he smashed three six­es and three fours off his 21 balls which fetched him 42 runs. His as­so­ci­a­tion with Dar­ren Bra­vo re­alised 67 runs from 6.1 overs.

Speak­ing af­ter the win, Pol­lard said: "I think they had us un­der pres­sure, some of our guys stood up. We bat­ted in two halves, and over­all a good match for us. Hope­ful­ly, I can con­tin­ue to lead and lead well.

"You need the sup­port of every­one. It was one of the bet­ter wick­ets in the tour­na­ment, 23-run mar­gin, but it was a lot clos­er I thought. We want to play the ball and not play the wick­et."

SCORES:

Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers 175/5(20) (Dar­ren Bra­vo 50, Kieron Pol­lard 42, Tim Seifert 33, Tion Web­ster 20) vs St Lu­cia Zouks 152/7 (20) (An­dre Fletch­er 42, Mark Deyal 40, Kieron Pol­lard 3/35, Dwayne Bra­vo 2/26) - TKR won by 23 runs.

Man of the match: Kieron Pol­lard.