RBCPL24: Charles’ superlative 89 against TKR puts St Lucia Kings in pole position

As T20 cricketing brains go, both Kieron Pollard and Kieron Pollard’s are right up there with them.

But when the Saint Lucia Kings’ Johnson Charles asked the questions of him at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba on Tuesday morning, the Trinbago Knight Riders skipper had no answers.

And his TKR were beaten convincingly by 81 runs.

Charles showed why he has been in the West Indies line-up for every T20 World Cup since 2012, silencing the critics who wrote him off as “just a vooper”.

He also silenced the large partisan BLCA crowd that came to see their homeboys break another record in Match 26 of the Republic Bank Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and beat their visitors out of sight. They had done it the night before against the Saint Kitts and Nevis Patriots, chasing down a record 193.

In the event, it was Charles who beat the TKR bowlers out of sight and then beat them for hiding! He scored only 13 off his first ten balls and got to 50 off his 23rd.

Exceptional! Fantastic! Fabulous! Rampant! Rattling along at a rate of knots! Running amok! Sensational! Stunning! Superb!  Top-drawer! Unstoppable! Wonderful!

The commentators, genuinely impressed, dusted off their thesauruses for the almost-36-year-old, whose 145-run opening partnership with SLK skipper Faf du Plessis proved to be greater—in more than one sense!—than the entire TKR reply of 139.

A prolific scorer whose forte has been power rather than touch, the right-handed opener produced a classy—yes, no mistake, classy!—89 in his team’s 218 for 6, the highest CPL total posted at the BLCA.

It put the match out of reach of Pollard’s powerful batting side.

In a wonderfully entertaining innings that spared only the injured Dwayne Bravo and the absent Sunil Narine of the TKR bowlers, he struck seven fours and eight sixes.

Do the math! That’s 76 out of 89. Only 13 not in boundaries!

And unlike hometown hero Nicholas Pooran on the night before, he did not need four lives.

He got a very early one when Akeal Hosein failed to hold a low return catch off the last ball of the very first over. And a second on 35 off Hosein when Keacy Carty grassed a difficult chance in the deep.

When Hosein and his spin companion Waqar Salamkheil put the ball in his arc on or outside off-stump, it travelled to or over the boundary.

When they dropped it short, ditto, occasionally after a delicate—yes, no mistake, delicate!—cut down to third man.

Occasionally, too, when he anticipated that the line would be right, the ball travelled to or over the right-hander’s off-side, struck with a left-hander’s grip and stance.

Charles eventually perished short of what would have been a richly deserved century. He had done enough to reclaim the lead in the see-saw battle for the top of the Most CPL Runs list with STKNP skipper Andre Fletcher, whose 2024 race is run.

But Charles did not win the game single-handedly. His skipper Faf du Plessis (59, 43, 3×6, 4×4) kept pace with him throughout the powerplay and reached 50 off only 36 balls.

He was still there at 145 when the Man-of-the-Match holed out to Chris Jordan on the midwicket boundary.

Jordan (1/39) would eventually york Tim Seifert (32, 17, 3×6, 4×4), who did not let the momentum slow after Pollard (4/38), filling the Bravo hole, accounted for du Plessis.

Hosein finished with figures of 0/32, Jayden Seales 1/35 while Salamkheil, often the best TKR bowler in the absence of Narine, finished wicketless, his three overs costing 51.

In the chase, so clinically completed the evening before, the highly outed TKR batting stumbled its way to 138.

Jason Roy lasted almost 14 overs and got 41 (29, 2×6, 3×4), losing Carty, Pooran, and Tim David and the promoted Hosein inside the powerplay.

Noor Ahmad (3/39), bowling over #6, shattered David’s stumps and had Hosein adjudged LBW off the very next ball—although replays showed that he had been struck outside the line of off-stump.

When Pollard was brilliantly caught by substitute Mikkel Govia millimetres off the ground at wide long-on for a three-ball duck, the score was 43 for 5.

The crowd went so silent, you could clearly hear the fat lady singing all the way down in Naparima Bowl.

Andre Russell damblayed the Tim David walk-on role, clouting his first ball from Ahmad for six and losing his leg-stump off the next. Roy and Jordan (27) then delayed the inevitable with a level-headed seventh-wicket stand of 29.

When Shadrack Descarte pulled off a stunning reflex catch off his own bowling to dismiss Roy, the decibel level in the Bowl rose appreciably.

Worryingly for TKR, who still have two group stage matches to complete, Bravo was literally in tears as he walked off the ground at the end of the game. Having pulled up when attempting to get to a skier, he remaining off the field for the duration of the SLK innings.

He reappeared at the fall of the ninth TKR wicket but called it a day after just two balls.

TKR, the massive defeat having badly damaged their net run-rate, are in fourth place on ten points, locked in a tie with Barbados Royals and Guyana Amazon Warriors.

They meet the first at the BLCA on Friday and the second in Match 30 in Providence on Sunday evening.

Still atop the table with 14 points now, the buoyant Kings have a challenging final game against the defending champions on the Guyana Amazon Warriors’ home pitch at Providence on Saturday morning. That should please them—the three they have just won on the trot were also morning games.

Back in Saint Lucia, where the country feted Olympic sprint champion Julien Alfred on the public holiday to be named in her honour, the cricket lovers always kept one eye on the game.

Seeing the way Charles manhandled the TKR attack and the way the TKR batsmen surrendered meekly to the SLK bowling, an old lady shook her head wisely and tut-tutted.

“Mais voyons!” she commented in the kweyol so popular on the island, “ravet pa ni raison douvant poule.”

Which may well have been the title of the tune wafting north-eastwards to the BLCA from beyond the San Fernando Hospital: “Cockroach ent have no right infronta fowl.”

Summarised scores

Toss: Trinbago Knight Riders

Saint Lucia Kings: 218 for 6 (20 overs) Johnson Charles 89, Faf du Plessis 59, Tim Seifert 32; Kieron Pollard 4/38

Trinbago Knight Riders: 138 all out (17.5 overs) Jason Roy 41, Chris Jordan 27; Noor Ahmad 3/39, David Wiese 2/27

Man-of-the-Match: Johnson Charles

Result: Saint Lucia Kings win by 81 runs

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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.