Medi­um-pac­er Hardus Viljoen bagged ca­reer-best Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League fig­ures of three wick­ets for 14 runs to guide the St Lu­cia Zouks to a cru­cial 20-run win over the St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots at the Daren Sam­my Sta­di­um in Gros Islet, St Lu­cia, on Tues­day night.

Viljoen's re­turn proved crit­i­cal as the Zouks, de­fend­ing 165-6, re­strict­ed the Pa­tri­ots to 145-9 al­though they had an off-colour night on the field in which they dropped sev­er­al catch­es but still sur­vived this de­fi­cien­cy in their game.

The re­sult once again threw the bot­tom half of the ta­ble in­to a tail­spin as the Zouks jumped up to fourth spot with five points, leapfrog­ging the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents and Ja­maica Ta­lawahs, both on fours points each. The Pa­tri­ots re­mained in third spot with eight points, just be­hind sec­ond-placed Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (9 pts). More im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, the Pa­tri­ots now have one round-robin match left against the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents and could strug­gle to make the play­offs if they do not win it.

Un­beat­en lead­ers Guyana Ama­zon War­riors have al­ready qual­i­fied for the play­offs with a max­i­mum 12 points from their six match­es. The Zouks, how­ev­er, will be seek­ing to stop the lead­ers in their matchup on Wednes­day at the same venue as they chase a play­off spot.

But if they do get in­to the play­offs, the Zouks will have Viljoen to thank for show­ing them the way for­ward. Need­ing an ear­ly break­through against the Pa­tri­ots, who have sev­er­al big hit­ters in their line-up, Viljoen did got the ear­ly wick­et of open­er Evin Lewis in just the fourth over.

Viljoen pro­duced a well-lined de­liv­ery out­side off stump and Lewis went for his favourite pull shot but top-edged the de­liv­ery to deep square leg where Christo­pher Barn­well took an easy catch as the Pa­tri­ots fell to 28-1.

Left-arm or­tho­dox spin­ner Jeav­or Roy­al then upped the pres­sure by bowl­ing the equal­ly dan­ger­ous De­von Thomas for just nine runs in the next over as the vis­i­tors slumped to 31-2.

Lau­rie Evans and Mo­hammed Hafeez en­gi­neered a re­cov­ery of sorts with a 49-run part­ner­ship be­fore medi­um pac­er Kesrick Williams en­tered the fray in the 13th over. He was im­me­di­ate­ly in­to his task of tak­ing wick­ets for skip­per Daren Sam­my by get­ting Evans' scalp for 28 with his very first ball - a clev­er­ly hid­den slow­er one -, which the bats­man put straight back at him for a caught and bowled op­por­tu­ni­ty. Five balls lat­er, Williams trapped Fabi­an Allen (1), who was pro­mot­ed up the or­der, plumb in front his wick­et and the Pa­tri­ots were tot­ter­ing at 89-4.

Skip­per Car­los Brath­waite was in next but he didn't last long. He was out in the next over off leg­break spe­cial­ist Fawad Ahmed for just two, af­ter he mis­cued a slog shot to a goo­gly, skied it and was well caught by a div­ing sub­sti­tute field­er Kavem Hodge charg­ing in from mid­wick­et.

Viljoen then bowled Shamarh Brooks (7) off his pad as the vis­i­tors were in even deep­er trou­ble at 103 for six. And when Ahmed pro­duced a caught and bowled ef­fort to re­move Hafeez in the 16th over for a top score of 29, it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the fat la­dy sung in the Zouks' favour.

Ear­li­er, Zouks open­er An­dre Fletch­er's 23-ball 36 and skip­per Sam­my's 19-ball 30 had tak­en the home side to what they felt was a de­fend­able to­tal.

Fletch­er hit four fours and two six­es while Sam­my hit three bound­aries and a max­i­mum in his knock. Christo­pher Barn­well (27) and Col­in In­gram (21) al­so made use­ful con­tri­bu­tions to the to­tal.

Hafeez bagged three wick­ets for 22 runs while Alzarri Joseph got two for 20 for the Pa­tri­ots

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

ST LU­CIA ZOUKS 165-6 (20) (An­dre Fletch­er 36, Dar­ren Sam­my 30, Christo­pher Barn­well 27, Mo­ham­mad Hafeez 3/22, Alzarri Joseph 2/20) v ST KITTS NEVIS PA­TRI­OTS 145-9 (20) (Mo­ham­mad Hafeez 29, Lau­rie Evans 28, Hardus Viljoen 3/14, Kesrick Williams 3/48)

Re­sult: ST LU­CIA ZOUKS WON BY 20 RUNS

Man-of-thew-match: Hardus Viljoen (SLZ)