A ram­pag­ing Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) will bat­tle an im­prov­ing St. Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots on Tues­day in what should be a high scor­ing match at Warn­er Park, the small­est venue in the 2019 Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League T20 tour­na­ment.

TKR are ly­ing sec­ond on the six-team stand­ings be­hind the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, al­though just on net run rate and they will be look­ing to not on­ly win but start to im­prove on their own net run rate as it could be the fo­cus at the back end of the tour­na­ment.

The for­mat of this CPL keeps the in­ter­est in win­ning ef­fi­cient­ly right down to the end, as the team which fin­ish­es on top of the round-robin phase is award­ed two bites of the cher­ry in terms of get­ting in­to the fi­nal through the play­off elim­i­na­tors.

TKR are fresh from their record 41-run win over the Ja­maica Tallawahs at Sabi­na Park on Fri­day night, while the Pa­tri­ots ham­mered a less than im­pres­sive St Lu­cia Zouks by six wick­ets at Warn­er Park on Sun­day night.

TKR, how­ev­er, have lost the ser­vices of fast bowler Muham­mad Has­nain, who has been called back to Pak­istan to play in the do­mes­tic Quaid-e-Azam tro­phy. There still has been no de­ci­sion as to whether some­one else will be draft­ed in­to the squad to re­place him. In the in­ter­im, the fast bowl­ing du­ties will fall in­to the hands of Muham­mad Ali Khan, who was the star for the TKR in their vic­to­ri­ous cam­paign last sea­son, and Trinida­di­an An­der­son Phillip, who has on­ly played one game so far this sea­son.

But TKR skip­per Kieron Pol­lard is keep­ing his men re­al head­ing in­to Tues­day's match.

"We have done well so far and this I put down to the hard work of all the play­ers. They have been work­ing since be­fore the tour­na­ment start­ed and are play­ing great crick­et. We just want to stick to our plan as much as pos­si­ble and keep sup­port­ing each oth­er," Pol­lard told Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day.

"When you win, you want to keep that up and make sure the mo­men­tum is not bro­ken and we will be go­ing all out to en­sure that we do just that."

TKR won sev­en of their ten games to top the group last sea­son but lost the first qual­i­fi­er to the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors. A 20-run win while de­fend­ing 165-6 against the Pa­tri­ots fol­lowed be­fore Col­in Munro’s un­beat­en 68 in the fi­nal helped the TKR win a sec­ond suc­ces­sive CPL ti­tle.

With the pic­turesque Warn­er Park venue al­ready fea­tur­ing in a match that saw 483 runs scored this sea­son, be­tween the Pa­tri­ots and Ja­maica Tallawahs, the might of the big hit­ters from the TKR, among them Munro, Lendl Sim­mons and Pol­lard, could be a ma­jor threat Tues­day.

The crowds here con­tin­ue to be less than im­pres­sive and Pa­tri­ots man­age­ment will be hop­ing that the win over the St Lu­cia Zouks on Sun­day and the gen­er­al all-round im­prove­ment will draw a few more to the ground for the match, which starts at 6 pm.

In 12 meet­ings be­tween the two teams so far in the CPL, TKR have won nine to the Pa­tri­ots three.

TEAMS

TKR: Kieron Pol­lard, Sunil Nar­ine, Col­in Munro, De­nesh Ramdin, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Lendl Sim­mons, Khary Pierre, Jim­my Nee­sham, Seekkuge Prasan­na, Amir Jan­goo, An­der­son Phillip, Mark Deyal, Tion Web­ster, Javon Sear­les, Akeal Ho­sein, Ali Khan.

St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots: Alzarri Joseph, Fabi­an Allen, Evin Lewis, Car­los Brath­waite, Rassie van der Dussen, Lau­rie Evans, Shel­don Cot­trell, De­von Thomas, Rayad Em­rit, Shamarh Brooks, Je­re­mi­ah Louis, Do­minic Drakes, Afif Hos­sain, Keron Cot­toy, Akeem Jor­dan, Us­ama Mir, Aaron Jones, Mo­ham­mad Hafeez, Ja­son Mo­hammed, Kjorn Ot­ley

TEAMS

TKR: Kieron Pol­lard, Sunil Nar­ine, Col­in Munro, De­nesh Ramdin, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Lendl Sim­mons, Khary Pierre, Jim­my Nee­sham, Seekkuge Prasan­na, Amir Jan­goo, An­der­son Phillip, Mark Deyal, Tion Web­ster, Javon Sear­les, Akeal Ho­sein, Ali Khan.

St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots: Alzarri Joseph, Fabi­an Allen, Evin Lewis, Car­los Brath­waite, Rassie van der Dussen, Lau­rie Evans, Shel­don Cot­trell, De­von Thomas, Rayad Em­rit, Shamarh Brooks, Je­re­mi­ah Louis, Do­minic Drakes, Afif Hos­sain, Keron Cot­toy, Akeem Jor­dan, Us­ama Mir, Aaron Jones, Mo­ham­mad Hafeez, Ja­son Mo­hammed, Kjorn Ot­ley

TKR VS PA­TRI­OTS HEAD TO HEAD

2015 - TKR won by 6 wk­ts

2015 - TKR won by 11 runs

2016 - Pa­tri­ots won by runs 34 runs

2016 - TKR won by 8 wk­ts

2017 - TKR won by 4 wk­ts

2017 - TKR won by D/L Method

2017 - Pa­tri­ots won by 38 runs

2017 - TKR won by 3 wk­ts

2018 - Pa­tri­ots won by 42 runs

2018 - TKR won by 46 runs

2018 - TKR won by 20 runs

2019 - TKR won by 11 runs