The Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers and the St Lu­cia Zouks had to set­tle for a share of the points af­ter rain forced the aban­don­ment of their Hero Caribbean Pro­fes­sion­al League match at the Daren Sam­my Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Gros Islet, St Lu­cia, on Sat­ur­day.

With a trop­i­cal de­pres­sion hov­er­ing in the re­gion over the next 48 hours, the rains as­so­ci­at­ed with the weath­er sys­tem came just be­fore 9 pm and un­for­tu­nate­ly did not re­lent, forc­ing the um­pires to aban­don the match. At the time, the home side was 99 for four in the 13th over with Col­in In­gram on 52 not out 0ff 34 balls and in­clud­ing five fours and two six­es.

Both teams had to set­tle for a point each, which helped TKR move to nine points and ce­ment their sec­ond-placed po­si­tion be­hind the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (10 pts) on the six-team ta­ble. The St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots fell to third with eight points. The Zouks, who des­per­ate­ly need­ed a win af­ter a 71-run loss the night be­fore to the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, moved to three points but stayed fifth, one point be­hind the Ba­jan fran­chise. The Ja­maica Tallawahs re­main an­chored at the bot­tom of the ta­ble with just two points.

The Tri­dents host the War­riors Sun­day in a match which will have more sig­nif­i­cance giv­en Sat­ur­day’s washout, the first in this year's tour­na­ment.

Ear­li­er Sat­ur­day, TKR skip­per Kieron Pol­lard had won the toss and asked Zouks Daren Sam­my’s side to take first strike, not­ing that rain was in the air.

And af­ter Zouks open­er An­dre Fletch­er blast­ed TKR spin­ner Akeal Ho­sein for two fours in the first over, pac­er Ali Khan broke through off the very first ball of the next. Fletch­er (9) was too ear­ly on his at­tempt­ed flick shot off a ball lined down the leg side and skied it high in­to the air where Khary Pierre eas­i­ly pouched it at deep square leg.

Af­ter Khan and Ho­sein kept Col­in In­gram and John Camp­bell rel­a­tive­ly qui­et for the next two overs, skip­per Kieron Pol­lard brought on medi­um pac­er Jim­my Nee­sham.

Nee­sham, who many fans blamed for the TKR’s last loss to the Pa­tri­ots, im­me­di­ate­ly re­ward­ed his skip­per with the wick­et of John Camp­bell (6) from a bril­liant piece of field­ing. The Ki­wi all-rounder de­liv­ered a ball which sat up on the wick­et and Camp­bell hit a blis­ter­ing off-dri­ve. It should have been four runs but Nee­sham in­stinc­tive­ly thrust out his right hand and the ball stuck to re­duce the Zouks to 34-2.

This brought Col­in de Grand­homme to the crease and he and In­gram be­gan a con­sol­i­da­tion of sorts for the home side with a 51-run part­ner­ship. How­ev­er, just when they were about to up the ante, Pol­lard struck just ahead of the wa­ter break. De Grand­homme (17) went af­ter a de­liv­ery pitched out­side the off-stump, had no con­trol over it and gave Nee­sham an easy catch at ex­tra cov­er.

With the score now 85-3, how­ev­er, the Zouks fans would have been more com­fort­able that they would not see an­oth­er col­lapse like the night be­fore against the Tri­dents. And as the de­struc­tive Rakheem Corn­wall strode to the crease, hav­ing been held back af­ter con­sec­u­tive fail­ures open­ing, they were cer­tain­ly hop­ing for some fire­works from him.

It was not to be on this night though, as the ex­per­i­ment failed af­ter Corn­wall, lucky to have not been run out the over be­fore, went af­ter Pierre out­side the off-stump in the 13th over, got a thick edge and looped his shot to Khan at third man to be out for just eight runs and the Zouks now 99-4.

But then the heav­ens opened up and the teams nev­er got the chance to take the field again.

SUM­MARISED SCORES

ST LU­CIA ZOUKS 99-4 (12.2) (Col­in In­gram 52*, Col­in de Grand­homme 17, Jim­my Nee­sham 1/10, Khary Pierre 1/18, Ali Khan 1/18) v TRIN­BA­GO KNIGHT RID­ERS

Re­sult: Match aban­doned due to rain