RBCPL24: When Nortje chose David over Goliath and let TKR escape a Patriots licking

Sunday night at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba. With his side chasing a challenging 193 for victory, Trinbago’s Nicholas Pooran was swashbuckling his way to a possible third CPL century.

And smiling like a Cheshire cat—even though he did not get to three figures by the end of Match 25 of the 2024 Republic Bank Caribbean Premier League (CPL).

This was not vintage Pooran. Far from it. He was not, on the day, the clinical destroyer he has so often been, most recently when he scored a scintillating 97 versus the Saint Kitts and Nevis Patriots. That Match 25 Sunday, TKR amassed 12 sixes and 13 fours—Pooran contributing seven and six of them respectively.

By way of reference, note that, of STKNP’s nine sixes and 16 fours, their skipper Andre Fletcher, who made 93 before falling off the last ball, got six and four respectively.

The STKNP skipper, however, got no chances; Pooran alone got four.

Eventually, Kieron Pollard’s side beat Fletcher’s by seven wickets, Pooran also getting 93. But not out. All those who saw the game will concede that the final result turned on those four missed chances.

Not many realised, however, that there was an equally important fifth chance that, arguably, affected the outcome. A fifth chance that was not missed.

I know absolutely nothing about Anrich Nortje’s religious persuasions. But I feel I can persuade him to concede that if you choose to get rid of David and leave Goliath untouched, you’re making the wrong choice.

Let me explain.

The score is 139 for 2 chasing 194. There are 30 balls left. Tabraiz Shamsi has accounted for Jason Roy for a 34-ball 64. Nortje runs in and serves up a slower ball. The batsman comes forward and pops it back to the bowler.

Unhesitatingly, gleefully, Nortje accepts the catch. Had the batsman been Pooran, he and his teammates could justifiably be over the moon.

But it was not Pooran, it was Tim David; their jubilation, I submit, was misplaced.

Potential, promise on paper, and proof are poles apart. Tim David has a big name and a big reputation. But what exactly has that combination produced in season 2024?

I remember two clouted boundaries off Keemo Paul to put an exclamation mark on the five-wicket win over Guyana Amazon Warriors. But what preceded those two boundaries?

He puttered around for 22 balls for 23, looking about as confident and convincing as Ernie Terrell against Muhammad Ali in the famous what’s-my-name bout.

His showing last week against the Saint Lucia Kings was no more impressive. Noor Ahmad gave him a lollipop and then a googly.

In my time playing street cricket, that was a common rule: six! And out!

When Nortje sent back David, the required run-rate was up. In double figures. And climbing. And David, who had replaced Roy, was manifestly off his rhythm with just nine off 12 balls and neither a six nor a four.

At the other end, Pooran seemed to see himself as some kind of Persian cat, still knight-riding his luck…

Here is how he used up four of the nine lives he seemed to think he had:

On 26 off 17 balls, the attacking left-hander edges Tabraiz Shamsi to Joshua Da Silva, standing up to the wicket. The keeper fails to hold on.

Still on 26 in over #11 immediately after the water break, Pooran has a go at Jeremiah Louis and gets more height than distance. The bowler’s younger brother, Mikyle, lines up the skier, palms cupped, and then suddenly stops short, leaving the chance for Ashmead Nedd. The off-spinner too leaves it for him.

Mortified, they look at each other as the ball lands safely between them.

The score remains 101 for 1. But only briefly as Pooran, such an ingrate, cracks the next ball for six.

Two chances gone a-begging and the run-rate climbing, Pooran, on 35, remains unrelenting.

At 117 for 2, Shamsi just having dismissed Roy, he goes after the Patriots’ most reliable wicket-taker again. He miscues his attempted smash. The chance falls to the diving Dominic Drakes. He misjudges it badly. He grasses it.

Three downed, one to go.

Finally, on 46 in over #15 with the score 134 for 2, the unchastened Pooran wades into Louis and gets a leading edge. The ball spoons high into the area between mid-off and long-off.

The nearest fielder is who? Drakes, of course! He races back from mid-off and barely gets his hands to the skier.

So, unless TKR were planning to become part of the new fad—entirely possible, one feels—and retire David hurt, might STKNP’s best interests not arguably have been served by Drakes getting under the Nortje catch? Or by Nortje doing a Drakes on it?

With 55 needed off 28 balls and Pollard, Andre Russell, Dwayne Bravo and Chris Jordan padded up, do you really want to see the back of a struggling Tim David?

Had Nortje deliberately or otherwise, shades of Clive Lloyd in the 1979 World Cup final, grassed the chance, would another over or two of the out-of-sorts Tim David at the wicket have made any difference?

Worth a thought, no, Mr Nortje?

Had Drakes and company been just a tad more efficient in the field and accepted one of Pooran’s four chances, it might have made a difference to the eventual outcome.

Nortje, too, could have altered the course of the game had he had the time to reflect…

…or the presence of mind to say, like Drakes, not today!

And what of Pooran? Which feline will he turn up as in the playoffs?

Those supporters who habitually transform the Queen’s Park Oval and the BLCA in Tarouba into a red sea will be hoping and praying for another Persian cat or Cheshire cat.

But the green and yellow Providence sea will be hoping for a horse, well, a cat of a completely different colour.

Bad luck black!

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Earl Best

Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.