Trinbago Knight Riders Crush Antigua Falcons by 9 Wickets in CPL Eliminator

Antigua and Barbuda Falcons crashed out of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) eliminator match against Trinbago Knight Riders. Shakib Al Hasan played a cameo innings of 26 runs off 9 balls for Antigua, who batted first. However, his innings did not come to fruition in the end. Nicholas Pooran’s batting storm helped Trinbago defeat Antigua by a big margin of 9 wickets.

Batting first at the Providence Stadium in Guyana, Antigua scored 166 runs for the loss of 8 wickets in the allotted 20 overs. Apart from Shakib’s cameo, Amir Jangu and Andres Goos scored fifties for the team. Although the Knight Riders lost wickets quickly in the chase, Nicholas Pooran and Alex Hales made an unbreakable partnership of 143 runs to secure a big win. The victory with 15 balls and 9 wickets in hand kept Trinbago in the race to play in the final.

Earlier, Antigua lost the wicket of opener Rakim Cornwall (6) quickly, as usual, while setting a big target. Amir Jangu and Andres Goos put on 108 runs for the second wicket to build a big foundation for the team. Although Antigua could have capitalized if their pair had scored runs faster. Jangu made it difficult with his slow batting. Before being dismissed, he scored 55 runs in 49 balls with 3 fours and 3 sixes. American batter Gus played an innings of 61 runs off 45 balls, hitting 5 fours and 3 sixes.

After the departure of Jangu-Gus, the Antigua batsmen started the procession of coming and going. They lost 6 wickets by a margin of 32 runs. Shakib, keeping one end in the middle, played a stormy innings of 26 runs in 9 balls with 4 fours and a six and remained unbeaten. That basically took Antigua’s capital to 166. On the other hand, for Trinbago, Sourav Netravalkar took the highest 3 wickets and Usman Tariq and Andre Russell took 2 wickets each.

Trinbago’s Kiwi opener Colin Munro (14) was dismissed for 25 runs in the chase. After that, the team did not have to look back. Pooran-Halees left the field with an unbreakable partnership of 143 runs. Captain Pooran scored 90 runs off 53 balls with 3 fours and 8 sixes and Hales was unbeaten on 54 runs off 40 balls with 3 fours and 6 sixes. As a result, Trinbago secured victory by scoring 168 runs for 1 wicket in 17.3 overs.

Shakib was wicketless for Antigua for 24 runs in 3 overs. Cornwall got the only wicket, but he gave away 50 runs in 4 overs.