St Kitts and Nevis Patriots 220 for 4 (Charles 78, Shanaka 36, Sams 2-40) beat Barbados Tridents 217 for 4 (De Kock 106, Carter 57, Naseem 2-43) by six wickets
As many as 16 sixes in each innings made it the
joint-fifth-most sixes in a CPL match, but Tridents’ score of 217 wasn’t enough to keep Patriots at the bottom of the table anymore.
The dramatic match came with its share of controversy. Charles was on 26 in the fourth over when he pulled a full toss from Ramon Simmonds and Sherfane Rutherford completed a sharp catch while diving forward at deep square leg. Charles had walked off the field but the third umpire wanted to check for the waist-high no-ball and the Tridents camp wasn’t unhappy when the big screen flashed “NOT OUT”. Things got worse for Tridents when Charles muscled the free-hit for six – his fourth of the innings.
Charles did the heavy lifting in the opening stand with a sedate Kyle Mayers, racing to a 29-ball fifty when he went after Mujeeb Ur Rahman before the halfway mark of the innings. Mayers and Charles struck three sixes between them in the tenth over off Gudakesh Motie, which went for 20 runs, placing them on 110 for no loss, needing another 108.
The stand was broken when Rutherford reached out for a return catch off Charles and even though he couldn’t hold on, the deflection crashed into the stumps with Mayers outside the crease at the non-striker’s end.
Tridents saw an opening and conceded just 22 runs in three overs after that point, and Charles holed out for 78 off Mujeeb in that period. But Shanaka and Jason Holder continued with the big hits to bring the equation down to 40 from 18 before both fell in the 18th over to Daniel Sams.
Tridents might have thought they were on top as Patriots now required 33 from 14 but Hasaranga smoked his first ball for six, which turned out to be a no-ball, and followed it with a four to make the equation 22 from 12. Fletcher provided the finishing touches with a no-look six and a straight six, with Hasaranga finding two smart boundaries behind point in between, and Patriots were home with five balls to spare.
Once Holder had Brandon King ramp one to short third with his second ball after Tridents had been asked to bat, Zachary Carter and de Kock started the six-hitting in a century stand of their own. They smashed 18 runs off the sixth over for a powerplay of 53 runs before Carter hammered three sixes in the space of four balls and de Kock reached a half-century off 31 balls.
Hasaranga got Patriots the breakthrough with his trademark wrong’un to remove Carter for 57 although the runs flowed from the other end. De Kock punished Naseem Shah and Jeremiah Louis all around the park and his six and four in consecutive balls off Holder in the 18th over got him to his second CPL hundred.
Naseem made up for the runs he had leaked with the wickets of de Kock and Rutherford in the next over before Chris Green’s twin sixes gave Tridents a total of over 200. It wasn’t enough, and though their road to the playoffs is an unlikely one at this stage, Tridents aren’t out of the race yet.
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