Af­ter four match­es on the road, four-time Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) Cham­pi­ons, Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers, are get­ting ready for the home leg of the com­pe­ti­tion. The Kieron Pol­lard-led team se­cured away wins against the St. Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots, the St. Lu­cia Kings, and the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als but suf­fered a loss against the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons.

TKR will be­gin the Trinidad leg of the CPL on Wednes­day with an al­ready sold-out af­fair against reign­ing cham­pi­ons the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors at the Queen’s Park Oval. The four-time CPL Cham­pi­ons will play back-to-back as they face the Fal­cons on Thurs­day in an ef­fort to avenge the de­feat to the Fal­cons at North Sound, An­tigua. Both Oval match­es will start at 7 pm.

TKR will then switch to the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do, to face the St. Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots on Sun­day al­so at 7 pm, be­fore a 10 am ap­point­ment with the St. Lu­cia Kings on Re­pub­lic Day, Sep­tem­ber 24th, be­fore they wrap up the home match­es against the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als on Fri­day 27th at 8 pm.

The team ar­rived on Sat­ur­day night, and while Tim David is yet to join the team, the Aus­tralian will join the squad in time for Wednes­day.

TKR man­ag­er Col­in Bor­de is ex­cit­ed to be home. “I think it’s al­ways ex­cit­ing when you’re com­ing home,”  Bor­de ex­plains. “Be­cause, of course, you’re com­ing to fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry, and you know that you have the sup­port of the crowd for five games.”

Bor­de was thank­ful for the band of trav­el­ling Trin­bag­on­ian sup­port­ers who trav­elled to the var­i­ous is­lands to sup­port their fran­chise.

“We must com­mend all of those per­sons who trav­elled to every is­land,” Bor­de re­marked. “There was a group of peo­ple fol­low­ing the team, and we want to thank them a lot for the sup­port out there. It’s tough when you’re out on the road. It’s good to see friend­ly faces and that red, black, and white.”

Look­ing back at the three road match­es, the for­mer West In­dies and Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force man­ag­er was sat­is­fied with the re­sults the Knight Rid­ers got in the com­pe­ti­tion so far.

“Hav­ing done three out of four games, that’s ex­cep­tion­al,” Bor­de said.

He added, “Par­tic­u­lar­ly when we have a cou­ple of se­nior play­ers who did not play and the young play­ers have shown that, giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ties that they’re grasp­ing a lit­tle with both hands, and that’s good for the team.  Now, we get home for gru­elling a cou­ple of weeks, but we look for­ward to it. The team is clear about their mis­sion. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we look for­ward to try­ing to ac­cu­mu­late more points to make sure that we qual­i­fy for the play­offs.”

Dwayne Bra­vo, who is re­tir­ing af­ter this edi­tion of the CPL, is yet to play a match; how­ev­er, the ex­pe­ri­enced man­ag­er said the for­mer cap­tain is ready to play.

He con­tin­ued, “There are some changes that may be made go­ing for­ward, and they’ll make those an­nounce­ments. We cer­tain­ly will see Dwayne Bra­vo,” Bor­de as­sured. This is Dwayne’s last CPL, and ob­vi­ous­ly he’s go­ing to want to play in front of his home crowds. And we have a cou­ple of things planned go­ing for­ward, and cer­tain­ly, we will see Dwayne Bra­vo play­ing in Trinidad. We ex­pect that Rus­sell will be avail­able again. And then we have a cou­ple of things on the ta­ble. TM David is go­ing to be join­ing us.”

Bor­de said to look for­ward to an­nounce­ments about the TKR in the com­ing days.

“So we have a lot hap­pen­ing in the next cou­ple of days and are hop­ing that we’ll con­tin­ue to do what we’ve come here to do, try to win some crick­et match­es, and al­so en­ter­tain the crowd,” he con­clud­ed.