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The Saint Lucia Kings put the smiles back on the face of captain Faf du Plessis on Thursday at the Beausejour Stadium in Saint Lucia where the Kings won their third match of the 2024 Republic Bank Caribbean Premier League (CPL).
Playing in front of a small but very enthusiastic home crowd, the homesters completed victory over the Saint Kitts and Nevis Patriots by five wickets with three and a half overs to spare.
The win gives them six points and a net run-rate of -0.133, putting them in third place behind Guyana Amazon Warriors and Barbados Royals and ahead of Trinidad Knight Riders.
“We turned it around nicely tonight,” an obviously pleased du Plessis told the post-match interviewer. “[It was] important after two back-to-back losses. We wanted to give the fans something to smile about and glad we could do that [tonight].”
After winning the toss, du Plessis invited the Patriots to have first strike on a good surface. Off the full 20 overs, the Patriots could only manage 173 for 5, a total which looked below par, given the conditions and history at the venue.
The Patriots started well, openers Andre Fletcher and Evin Lewis (18) putting on 51 off 6.2 overs, their best opening partnership of the tournament thus far, and Kyle Mayers (17) helping carry the score to 82/2 at the drinks break.
But so well did the Kings’ bowlers execute in the middle overs that, after 13 overs, the score was just 103/2 and only two fours and two sixes had been struck after the powerplay.
Fletcher completed his 50 in 40 balls with five fours and two sixes but he never managed to lift the tempo of the innings in the crucial middle overs. Left arm-wrist spinner Noor Ahmad, for example—three of whose allotment came between overs #10 and 15—finished with figures of 4-0-23-2… and 12 dot balls!
The STKNP skipper said that the score felt “20 short on this wicket” and praised his bowlers and fieldsmen for the way they performed.
“It was really good,” he oozed. “Great bowling performance from our guys.”
Fletcher’s innings was ended in the 17th over when 39-year-old David Wiese took a spectacular catch running back at long-off. And Shadrack Descarte’s diving effort on the midwicket boundary to dismiss Mikyle Louis evoked comparisons to Wiese’s catch-of-the-tournament effort against the Trinbago Knight Riders the evening before.
“Great catches,” du Plessis commented. “The boys have been catching well. [Against guys that can hurt you], these catches are really important.”
STKNP eventually got to 173 for 5 which, according to Wiese’s post-innings assessment, was at least seven runs short of what SLK felt comfortable chasing.
The SLK chase got off to a flying start. No accident, according to du Plessis.
“Really important to put the pressure on the bowlers [at the start],” he said. “Chasing 170, you can break the back of the opposition when you do that. Glad we could do it.”
“[It is] important that one guy also bats through, and [Johnson] Charles did that beautifully.”
With his 74, Charles became the first CPL player to score 3,000 runs in the tournament, just eclipsing Fletcher who fell five short. He called his knock “a very good innings” and lamented that he had been unable “to finish it off for the team”.
He offered “a huge thank you to our supporters” who were “supporting us, even when we lost two”.
“Opening with Faf,” he added, “has been good. We feed off each other’s energy.”
Charles and Du Plessis (62, 31 balls, 5×4, 5×6) began at a rate of knots. Men on a mission, they pummelled the hapless Patriots to reach 115 without loss in the 11th over.
Urged on by his countrymen who were literally dancing in the stands, Man-of-the-Match Charles (74, 42, 7×6, 4×4) raced to 50 off 33 balls with four fours and four sixes.
Such was the carnage effected by the pair that Fletcher waited until the 12th over to introduce arguably his primary wicket-taking bowler, left-arm wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi.
Introduced in the fourth over, the other left-armer, the vastly experienced finger spinner Veerasammy Permaul, had conceded 17 and 22 off his first two overs.
Interestingly, right-arm wrist spinner Wanindu Hasaranga’s first two overs cost four and seven respectively. When Fletcher turned to him again in the 16th, he conceded just two runs and claimed two scalps.
Fletcher offered no explanation for his curious choices except to say why he had opted to give the new ball to almost-21-year-old rookie Johann Layne (2-0-30-0).
“With his height and pace,” said the skipper, “he is very effective with the new ball. Unfortunately, it was not his day today.”
Photo: Ashley Allen – CPL T20/CPL T20 via Getty Images
He praised Rilee Rossouw, calling the half-century he contributed off just 30 balls in the middle of the innings “a good knock”. But he criticized the pace at which his team scored their runs, singling out himself for special mention.
“We started well in the powerplay,” he said, “and I thought we slowed down a bit in the middle. Our strike rate could have been better, especially me.”
The loss puts STKNP (2 pts) firmly at the bottom of the standings, six of their seven games in the tournament to date defeats.
Photo: Randy Brooks/CPL T20 via Getty Images
So, looking ahead to the three games they have left, Fletcher observed that they “don’t have a choice but to go out there and play cricket. We have to find a way to win. We have been on the losing side for six games and we have to try our best.”
“We have to believe in ourselves,” he ended, “and try to execute as well as possible, with the bat, the ball and in the field.”
But they are up against second-placed, unbeaten Barbados Royals in Barbados next. Their 2024 campaign is hanging by a thread and Rovman Powell and his team are likely to delight in cutting them loose.
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Warren Thompson is a Tobagonian by birth, a life-long student of cricket by preference and an economist by profession. His formal training came at QRC, The UWI and the University of Wales but the assets/skills of which this father of three girls is proudest come from the School of Hard Knocks.
