The four teams for the 2019 Hero CPL play-offs have been fi­nalised af­ter the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents de­feat­ed the St Lu­cia Zouks by 24 runs last night in an­oth­er mad fin­ish at the Kens­ing­ton Oval to take the fi­nal spot.

Set a mea­gre 142 runs to win the clash and move in­to the play-offs them­selves, the un­der­bel­ly of the Zouks bat­ting was in­stead cru­el­ly ex­posed by leg-spin­ner Hay­den Walsh Jr and they fell for just 117 runs.

The win pushed the Tri­dents to fourth place on the six-team ta­ble with eight points but more im­por­tant­ly de­nied the Zouks or earn­ing any more points than the sev­en they end­ed their round-robin cam­paign with.

The teams in­volved in the play-offs will thus be the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (14 pts), Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (10 pts), St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots (10 pts) and the Tri­dents.

In fact, the on­ly thing to re­solve now is which of the team will fin­ish in the top two spots to earn them­selves to chance at mak­ing the Oc­to­ber 12 fi­nal.That bat­tle will start in earnest on Mon­day when the TKR hosts the War­riors at the Queen's Park Oval, port-of-Spain, from 7 pm

Ear­li­er Sun­day, af­ter John­son Charles smacked 47 to lead the Tri­dents to 141-7 off their 20 overs in an oth­er­wise sor­ry bat­ting ef­fort, that score looked in­ad­e­quate to give them the edge they need­ed to surge to the play­offs.

But the Tri­dents bowlers were too clever on their home ground on the night. As soon as the ball grew soft­er, the bowlers, us­ing clever change of pace and a dis­ci­plined line and length, were able to sti­fle the Zouks bat­ting.

The Zouks had run quick­ly out the block and at one stage the crowd at Kens­ing­ton grew very qui­et with the score at 77-2 af­ter eight overs and Col­in In­gram hit­ting the ball clean­ly about the ground.

Tri­dents skip­per Ja­son Hold­er then brought on the ex­pe­ri­enced Bangladeshi all-rounder Shak­ib Al Hasan and he struck im­me­di­ate­ly with the wicvket of In­gram (25) to spark a col­lapse that saw the Zouks fall short.

Bowl­ing well in tan­dem with Al Hasan in the mid­dle overs was the left-arm medi­um-pac­er Ray­mond Reifer. He was ex­cel­lent in his three overs, where he was able to grab one wick­et for 13. The spells by Al Hasan and Reifer stalled the Zouks but with wick­ets in hand, they still stood a great chance.

This was when tri­dents skip­per Hold­er played his last cards in Eng­lish­man Har­ry Gur­ney and Amer­i­can leg-spin­ner Hay­den Walsh.

Gur­ney fin­ished with fig­ures of three for 17 off his four overs, while Walsh was again bril­liant with four for 26. Walsh has had a bril­liant last three games here in Bar­ba­dos, claim­ing 11 wick­ets, in­clud­ing a five-wick­et haul against the TKR on Thurs­day night.

SUM­MARISED SCORES

BAR­BA­DOS TRI­DENTS 141-7 (20) (John­son Charles 47, Justin Greaves 27*, Shak­ib Al Hasan 22, Kr­ish­mar San­tok­ie 2/25, Hardus Viljoen 2/26) v ST LU­CIA ZOUKS 117 all out (18.4) (Hay­den Walsh 4/26, Har­ry Gur­ney 3/17)

Re­sult: BAR­BA­DOS TRI­DENTS WON BY 24 RUNS

Man-of-the-match: Hay­den Walsh (BT)