All-rounders An­dre Rus­sell and Akeal Ho­sein pro­duced three-wick­et hauls as Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers grabbed much-need­ed points with a 26-run vic­to­ry over Guyana Ama­zon War­riors to end their three-game los­ing streak and reignit­ed their Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) cam­paign at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day night.

Stum­bling through the tour­na­ment with just a sin­gle win in five out­ings pre­vi­ous­ly, TKR put their poor form be­hind them to suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend 150 and move up to fourth in the stand­ings on five points.

Rus­sell over­came his Twen­ty20 World Cup snub to snatch three for 16 with his sharp medi­um pace while left-arm spin­ner Akeal Ho­sein picked up three for 36 as Ama­zon War­riors were bun­dled out for 124 in the 18th over, to slump to the bot­tom of the stand­ings.

On­ly Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj with 28 and cap­tain Shim­rom Het­my­er (20) got in­to the 20s as Ama­zon War­riors’ strug­gles con­tin­ued.

The Ama­zon War­riors won the toss and opt­ed to field first and they pro­duced a dis­ci­plined per­for­mance with the ball that kept the Knight Rid­ers in check through­out. Sunil Nar­ine, Kieron Pol­lard and Ravi Ram­paul hit a com­bined five six­es to­geth­er with Col­in Munro hit­ting a con­trolled un­beat­en 42 from 37 balls, and Tim Seifert (27) and Nar­ine (26) chip­ping in with valu­able knocks for the TKR who set a to­tal of 150 runs that al­ways ap­peared as if it would be tricky to chase.

Led by Tabraiz Sham­si’s 4/36, wick­ets were tak­en at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals to en­sure that no bat­ter ever felt com­fort­able at the crease as the Knight Rid­ers reached 150/8.

The TKR lost Tion Web­ster to the first ball of the con­test from fast bowler Ro­mario Shep­herd (3-24) but Munro, who count­ed five fours, put on 31 with Nicholas Pooran (15) for the sec­ond wick­et and a fur­ther 51 for the third with Seifert.

Once Munro and Seifert per­ished in a slide trig­gered by the South African left-arm spin­ner (4-36) that saw three wick­ets tum­ble for 24 runs, the in­nings nev­er re­al­ly re­cov­ered.

Need­ing 151 to win the Ama­zon War­riors got off to the worst pos­si­ble start los­ing Paul Ster­ling for a duck and three wick­ets in to­tal in the pow­er play.

The Ama­zon War­riors were then ig­nit­ed by Hem­raj, who struck five fours, and put on 34 for the sec­ond wick­et with Col­in In­gram (13) to patch things up.

Het­my­er and In­gram briefly threat­ened to take the game away from the Knight Rid­ers but when Rus­sell re­moved Het­my­er the col­lapse be­gan.

In­gram added a fur­ther 28 with Het­my­er for the fourth wick­et but Rus­sell, Ho­sein and off-spin­ner Nar­ine (2-9) joined forces to wreck the in­nings as Ama­zon War­riors lost their last sev­en wick­ets for 43 runs.

BRIEF SCORES

Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers 150/8 (Munro 42, Seifert 27; Sham­si 4/36, Shep­herd 3/22) beat Guyana Ama­zon War­riors 124 all out (Hem­raj 28, Het­my­er 20; Rus­sell 3/16, Ho­sein 3/36) by 26 runs.

(CMC)