“On a per­son­al lev­el, it’s good that I’ll be walk­ing out at the Queen’s Park Oval and every­one will be with me this time rather than against me for the last six years so that in it­self is a boost­er.” Kieron Pol­lard’s state­ment epit­o­mized what the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers’ (TKR) start to the 2019 sea­son will be like as the team faces St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots (SKN) at the Oval this evening from 7 pm. The hosts are the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons in the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter win in 2017 and 2018.

An in­jury to his in­dex fin­ger on his left hand has ruled reg­u­lar cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo out of the first few weeks of the tour­na­ment al­low­ing Pol­lard to as­sume the lead­er­ship po­si­tion. This is his first time play­ing for TKR in the sev­en-year his­to­ry of the CPL. Dar­ren Bra­vo will al­so miss tonight’s game and pos­si­bly Fri­day’s match against the Ja­maica Tallawahs af­ter sus­tain­ing a con­cus­sion in the sec­ond Test against In­dia on Sun­day.

At the pre-match press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Pol­lard gave an up­date on the left-han­der’s sta­tus. He said, “I don’t ex­pect him to take the park. We have been giv­en five days min­i­mum and it’s up to the in­di­vid­ual but it’s noth­ing too se­ri­ous so we just need to take it easy.”

Pol­lard al­so lament­ed the loss of the big­ger Bra­vo, who is the tour­na­ment’s lead­ing wick­et-tak­er with 97 scalps. “These things hap­pen in sport and we have to take that on the chin,” the all-rounder said. “At the back­end of the camp, we went to To­ba­go and had a re­lax­ing day as a team. I think the guys are rar­ing to take the field and rep­re­sent­ing TKR,” he said.

Pol­lard led the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents for five years and al­so took over the cap­tain­cy at the St Lu­cia Stars last year. He has al­so had stints as cap­tain of In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) fran­chise Mum­bai In­di­ans.

The 32-year-old has played 478 T20 match­es and will bring a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence to his role for the Sep­tem­ber 4 to Oc­to­ber 12 tour­na­ment.

He’s been giv­en a vote of con­fi­dence by TKR di­rec­tor Venky Mysore, who said, “His lead­er­ship abil­i­ties are well proven and, like Bra­vo, will bring a very ag­gres­sive style as cap­tain in TKR’s quest for a third cham­pi­onship in a row.”

Both Pol­lard and SKN cap­tain Car­los Brath­waite em­pha­sized the need for win­ning small bat­tles through­out the tour­na­ment as they looked ahead to the next six weeks. Pol­lard said, “Some­times you set small goals and the first goal for us is to try to qual­i­fy, be­ing in that top four, then when the play­offs come we take it from there. We’ll be tak­ing it one game at a time and not get­ting too over­con­fi­dent and ahead of our­selves. Each game is go­ing to be im­por­tant for us and we’re look­ing for­ward to that.”

Brath­waite, on the oth­er hand, said, “It’s a lot of small things that go in­to mak­ing your cham­pi­on and that’s our goal at the end of the day.”

TKR will be­gin its cam­paign for a hat-trick of CPL ti­tles hav­ing won the ti­tle three times be­fore in 2015, 2017 and 2018.

TEAMS

TRIN­BA­GO KNIGHT RID­ERS

Dwayne Bra­vo, Kieron Pol­lard (Capt), Sunil Nar­ine, Col­in Munro, De­nesh Ramdin, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Muham­mad Has­nain, 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 (Capt), 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.