Skip­per Car­los Brath­waite played the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League match of his life to steer the St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots to a Su­per Over vic­to­ry against the pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers at Warn­er Park in St Kitts on Tues­day night.

Braith­waite first struck a 30-ball 64 as the Pa­tri­ots, chas­ing 216 for four, made 216-7. And in the Su­per Over, he hit pac­er Ali Khan for two six­es and a four to set TKR 19 to win be­fore sur­pris­ing­ly tak­ing the ball him­self to re­strict the vis­i­tors to just five runs, spark­ing wild cel­e­bra­tions well in­to the night at the sta­di­um.

The vic­to­ry ce­ment­ed Pa­tri­ots’ third spot on the six-team ta­ble with six points, while TKR re­mained in joint first with the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, both teams on eight points (8 pts). The War­riors are now the on­ly un­beat­en team in the com­pe­ti­tion and can put some day­light be­tween them­selves and TKR head­ing to­wards the play­offs if they can main­tain that form by beat­ing the Ja­maica Tallawahs on Wednes­day at Sabi­na Park, Ja­maica.

How­ev­er, Pa­tri­ots would not have got in­to a win­ning po­si­tion had all-rounder Rayad Em­rit not come good with the bat. Need­ing 19 runs to win off the last over of their in­nings, Em­rit hit 11 runs, in­clud­ing a four off pac­er Jim­my Nee­sham’s last de­liv­ery to lev­el the scores and force the Su­per Over.

Braith­waite and Evin Lewis then strode to the crease and the for­mer dom­i­nat­ed the part­ner­ship to set TKR good tar­get. There then seemed to be some cross wires with­in the Pa­tri­ots camp as first Alzarri Joseph start­ed lim­ber­ing up to bowl be­fore Brath­waite took the ball him­self. Coach Robin Singh called Joseph to send a sig­nal that he should be bowl­ing the over, but Brath­waite over­rode the de­ci­sion any­way.

Any ad­van­tage TKR had seemed negat­ed when they al­so in­ex­plic­a­bly chose to send out Dar­ren Bra­vo, who was in his first game, along­side skip­per Kieron Pol­lard in­stead of ei­ther Lendl Sim­mons, who had hit a bril­liant 90 in his team's in­nings, or the usu­al­ly re­li­able Col­in Munro.

Bra­vo missed Brath­waite's first ball with a wide swing of his bat and go­ing for a sim­i­lar shot off the next, got a thick edge and was caught be­hind by De­von Thomas. Sim­mons came to the crease but he too could on­ly get one run off the next ball and from the next three de­liv­er­ies, Pol­lard could on­ly man­age a four.

Ear­li­er, Sim­mons had con­tin­ued his fine form by blast­ing a 45-ball 90, in­clud­ing nine fours and four six­es, as TKR made what they thought was a for­mi­da­ble tar­get.

Sim­mons brought up his third suc­ces­sive CPL half-cen­tu­ry in style, cut­ting medi­um pac­er Rayad Em­rit over the third man bound­ary for a max­i­mum.

Pac­er Shel­don Cot­trell fi­nal­ly got the break­through for the Pa­tri­ots in the 12th over. See­ing Sim­mons charg­ing down at him, Cot­trell de­liv­ered a bounc­er and Sim­mons could not pull out of his hook shot in time, spoon­ing his ef­fort to Shamarh Brooks at point. But then, how­ev­er, Sim­mons had shared in a 90-run stand with Munro and giv­en TKR an­oth­er plat­form at 139 for two in­side 12 overs.

But the Pa­tri­ots bowlers did well to keep the TKR scor­ing down to just 77 runs in the next eight overs.

Lewis then put an ear­ly scare with­in TKR's hearts, belt­ing medi­um-pac­er Nee­sham for 31 runs in the fourth over and shar­ing in a 63-run sec­ond-wick­et part­ner­ship with Lau­rie Evans as the Pa­tri­ots matched TKR's Pow­er­play ef­fort. How­ev­er, with the score on 67 in the sixth over, An­der­son Phillip, brought back for a sec­ond spell, pro­duced a length ball which Evans placed in­to the hands of Dar­ren Bra­vo on the bound­ary.

In an ap­par­ent ploy in his next over, Phillip be­gan bowl­ing wider of the off stump to Lewis. He bowled two wides first up be­fore get­ting Lewis to sky his sec­ond le­gal ball, a full toss, to Pol­lard at deep point. Lewis was out for a blis­ter­ing 45 from 21 balls in­clud­ing three fours and five six­es.

The match was sprung wide open in the next over when Mo­ham­mad Hafeez launched spin­ner Khary Pierre to­wards the long-on bound­ary. The ball looked like it had the life to go over the ropes but Pol­lard bril­liant­ly plucked it out the night sky with one hand and kept his bal­ance on one foot be­fore cel­e­brat­ing in front the Pa­tri­ots dugout as the home side slumped to 80-4.

On this night, how­ev­er, Braith­waite had oth­er plans and he shared in an 84-run fifth-wick­et part­ner­ship with Shamarh Brooks (20) to give Pa­tri­ots hope. When he was out in the 17th over with the score on 173 for six, TKR felt they had it in the bag on­ly to see late hit­ting hero­ics from Fabi­an Allen (12) and Em­rit (21*) pull the two teams lev­el at the end be­fore Brath­waite pulled off hi Su­per Over hero­ics.

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

TRIN­BA­GO KNIGHT RID­ERS 216-4 (20) (Lendl Sim­mons 90, Col­in Munro 28, Dar­ren Bra­vo 24*, Jim­my Nee­sham 22*, Car­los Brath­waite 2/48) v ST KITTS NEVIS PA­TRI­OTS 216-7 (Car­los Brath­waite 64, Evin Lewis 45, An­der­son Phillip 3/38 Ali Khan 2/27)

Re­sult: Pa­tri­ots won in Su­per Over.

Man-of-the-Match: Car­los Brath­waite (STKNP)