GROS ISLET, St Lu­cia—Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers slumped to their sec­ond de­feat in three out­ings af­ter their bat­ting suf­fered yet an­oth­er melt­down in pur­suit of a get­table tar­get against Ja­maica Tallawahs, yes­ter­day.

Asked to chase on­ly 154 at the Daren Sam­my Crick­et Ground, TKR limped to 119 for eight from their 20 overs to go down by 34 runs, with on­ly New Zealan­der Col­in Munro pass­ing 20 with a top score of 29 from 30 balls.

Their new big-hit­ting ac­qui­si­tion, all-rounder An­dre Rus­sell man­aged on­ly 17 while feared cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard was dis­missed cheap­ly for six.

The de­feat left the mul­ti­ple-time cham­pi­ons fourth in the ta­ble on three points, above last year’s los­ing fi­nal­ists on two points and Guyana Ama­zon War­riors on a sin­gle point.

West In­dies star Rov­man Pow­ell’s 67 from 49 de­liv­er­ies had ear­li­er lift­ed Tallawahs to 153 for sev­en from their 20 overs af­ter they were sent in.

The Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers won the toss and chose to field, Ravi Ram­paul made ear­ly in­roads by re­mov­ing both open­ers, Bran­don King and Ken­nar Lewis in the Pow­er­Play, and were strug­gling to score runs in the first ten overs be­fore Pow­ell com­bined with Ray­mon Reifer in a 90 run part­ner­ship stand to aid their side. How­ev­er, Tallawahs cap­tain Pow­ell would lead by ex­am­ple, hit­ting ten bound­aries in his in­nings of 67 to take his side to 153/7 af­ter 20 overs.

The right-han­der lashed half-dozen fours and four six­es, putting on a pre­cious 95 for the fourth wick­et with all-rounder Ray­mon Reifer (28), af­ter Tallawahs found them­selves in a hole at 31 for three at the start of the sev­enth over.

Reifer played the sup­port­ing role, count­ing four fours in a 26-ball knock be­fore falling in the 17th over and Pow­ell fol­lowed at the start of the next over, af­ter com­plet­ing a 42-ball fifty.

Vet­er­an seam­er Ravi Ram­paul was TKR’s best bowler with three for 40 de­spite Pow­ell tak­ing 21 runs off the 17th over bowled by him, while off-spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine in four overs which cost 11 runs and yield­ed two wick­ets.

Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers once again utilised Nar­ine at the top of the or­der but he was bowled in the first over by Mo­ham­mad Amir (2-15) with one run on the board.

Munro tried to re­pair the in­nings in a 25-run sec­ond wick­et stand with Tion Web­ster (5) be­fore hol­ing out in the deep in the 10th over af­ter hit­ting one four and two six­es and his coun­try­man Tim Seifert (15) put on 21 for the fourth with left-hand­ed Nicholas Pooran (13) be­fore Amir struck again to re­move him fol­low­ing at the end of the 12th over as the Knight Rid­ers were un­able to build any part­ner­ships, with Kieron Pol­lard and An­dre Rus­sell al­so falling. In the end, they scored 119/8, falling 34 runs short of their tar­get.

There was a clat­ter of wick­ets there­after as left-arm spin­ner Imad Wasim (2-20) struck telling blows at the back end. (CMC)