Four wins in their first four match­es have been fol­lowed by three loss­es and a washout and now, the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) find them­selves in a po­si­tion where they need to win one of their fi­nal two match­es to en­sure they fin­ish sec­ond in the round-robin stage of the 2019 Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League to get two chances at reach­ing the fi­nals of the tour­na­ment.

A crowd of 15,000 showed up at the Queen's Park Oval on a Mon­day night to lend sup­port to the home fran­chise but left a dis­ap­point­ed lot as their team was de­feat­ed by a ma­raud­ing Guyana Ama­zon War­riors by 19 runs. The War­riors have en­sured they will fin­ish atop the stand­ings with eight wins on the trot and are now on 16 points.

On Wednes­day at 7 pm, the TKR will en­ter­tain the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents hop­ing to get the bet­ter of them in an at­tempt to reach 11 points and fin­ish in the sec­ond po­si­tion. If they can't then they will have to run across to Guyana on Fri­day and look to get a win in their fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary round match to en­sure they fin­ish sec­ond and meet Guyana in the first play­off on Sun­day.

On Mon­day night, they came up short with Keemo Paul’s 19th over in which on­ly sin­gles came from the last five balls eas­ing the War­riors’ fray­ing nerves be­fore Tahir bowled Kieron Pol­lard for a sen­sa­tion­al 71 from 38 balls with three balls to go and 21 still need­ed to at last fin­ish the con­test. The fi­nal win­ning mar­gin of 19 runs al­so high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of Ro­mario Shep­herd’s late cameo with the bat in the War­riors’ in­nings – he smashed 32no from 13, with two six­es and a four to fin­ish it off as 25 came from Chris Jor­dan’s clos­ing over.

Hav­ing mus­cled their way to 185/6 de­spite a trou­bling mid-in­nings wob­ble, the War­riors then stran­gled the Knight Rid­ers top or­der through their bat­tery of spin­ners.

Chris Green once again led the way, bowl­ing his four overs off the reel at the top of the in­nings, re­mov­ing the dan­ger­ous Col­in Munro and Lendl Sim­mons, and re­turn­ing fig­ures of 2/18.

Im­ran Tahir did for Mark Deyal and Shoaib Ma­lik had De­nesh Ramdin caught in the deep off a slog-sweep to leave TKR reel­ing at 53/4.

Not even Pol­lard could res­cue the Knight Rid­ers from there, al­though he gave it a re­al crack. He shared a swash­buck­ling 125-run stand with Bra­vo, who him­self cleared the ropes six times in a 46-ball 58 not out, but the re­quired rate con­tin­ued to climb through­out the part­ner­ship. Even when 57 runs were plun­dered in four overs from the 15th to the 18th. Paul’s nerve­less 19th over was ul­ti­mate­ly key and across the 40 overs, the War­riors were de­serv­ing win­ners.

Look­ing back at the Guyana game Pol­lard said: "I thought in the back end of the in­nings we gave 15-20 runs too much. Al­though con­di­tions were damp for bowlers, it was the same for both teams. A lit­tle more pre­ci­sion in our ex­e­cu­tion could have got us chas­ing a low­er to­tal."

Look­ing ahead at Wednes­day's game Pol­lard said: "We have to look at our over­all crick­et and do some in­tro­spec­tion. We have to look at our at­ti­tude on the field. The en­tire tour­na­ment the field­ing has been atro­cious. The catch­ing has been piss poor and we are falling in­to a trap of drop­ping a cou­ple of cru­cial catch­es, Shep­herd and Hem­raj got sim­ple chances. We need to bat in part­ner­ships and we need to bowl well. So in all as­pects we need to im­prove as a team."

Teams:

Teams:

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

Tri­dents: Alex Hales, Ja­son Hold­er (capt), Asif Ali, Sandeep Lamich­hane, John­son Charles, Shai Hope, Ash­ley Nurse, Jonathan Carter, Chemar K Hold­er, Leniko Bouch­er, Roshon Primus, Ray­mon Reifer, Justin Greaves, Joshua Bish­op, Hay­den Walsh.

TKR VS TRI­DENTS HEAD TO HEAD

2013 - Tri­dents won by four wick­ets.

2014 - TKR by 7 wk­ts.

2014 - Tri­dents won by 69 runs.

2015 - Tri­dents won by 8 wk­ts.

2015 - TKR won by 72 runs.

2015 - TKR won by 5 wk­ts.

2016 - TKR won by 11 runs.

2016 - TKR won by 7 wk­ts.

2017 - TKR won by 2 wk­ts.

2017 - Tri­dents won by 16 runs.

2018 - TKR won by 4 wk­ts.

2018 - TKR won by 9 runs.

2019 - Tri­dents won by 63 runs.