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West Indians, were you watching the second Kolkata Knight Riders and Lucknow Super Giants thriller? With two ex-Maroon Men, Sunil Narine and Nicholas Pooran, up against each other in Sunday’s IPL eighth round clash in Lucknow?
Both gentlemen, no one needs to be reminded, players who prematurely called time on their West Indies careers? Narine in 2023 at the age of 35 and Pooran in 2025 when he was a mere 29?
Photo: CWI Media.
Well, if you weren’t watching, forget about cricket and make football your sport. Why? Because you will want to kick yourself.
If you’re T&Tian and you were watching, you probably back KKR because of the association with TKR. So I’m willing to bet you haven’t been able to wipe the smile off you face yet—even if you have a soft spot for Nicky P.
The truth is that the Caribbean Cavaliers are no longer the dominant presence WI once were in the IPL. For KKR, Rovman Powell is on the field and Dwayne Bravo and Andre Russell on the coaching staff. Sherfane Rutherford represents Mumbai Indians on the field and Kieron Pollard off it.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
On no other team will you find more than one West Indian and there are none to be found in the Punjab Kings line-up—so well served yesteryear by, inter alia, Chris “Universe Boss” Gayle and Nicholas Pooran.
On Sunday, though, the West Indians were right at the centre of the action. There were the two passport-carrying Trinidadians on opposing sides along with Rovman Powell, a genuine Jamaican, and honorary West Indian Rinku Singh.
For me, that Indian earned the honorific in the 2023 IPL when he went one better than Carlos Brathwaite, smacking five sixes in the last over with KKR needing 29 for victory.
On Sunday, Rinku was everywhere the winning side needed him to be.
First, he smashed four sixes off Digvesh Rathi in the 20th over to take his final score to an unbeaten 83 off 51 balls and his team’s total to a half-decent 155. Then, when LSG batted, he showed a clean pair of hands, safely holding on to all four catches and everything else that came his way.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
If Powell had done the same and not shelled the difficult chance Himmant Singh offered him at long-on in the penultimate over, LSG might well have fallen short of their modest target. To add to his team’s woes, the ball thudded into the boundary cushion.
Rinku, however, swallowed the chance that came his way not long after so the miss proved not as costly as it might have been.
In the event, with seven runs needed for the win, Mohammed Shami clouted Kartik Tyagi’s last ball of the innings over long-off to level the scores. Pooran’s contribution was a paltry 12-ball 9.
(via Prokerala.)
With four fieldsmen set behind square on the off-side for him, he cut Varun Chakaravarthy straight down Narine’s throat at short third man.
And so, to separate the two teams, to the season’s first Super Over.
The television commentators discussed three possible pairs of batsmen for LSG: the prolific opening pair of Aiden Markram and Mitchell Marsh, Markram and LSG skipper Rishabh Pant and Marsh and Pant.
Pooran’s name never came up.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
But Nicky P it was who walked out to be bowled neck and crop by Narine as he swung across the line of the first ball, a perfect off-spinner.
In 14 matches in the 2025 season, he hit a whopping 40 sixes and scored a total of 524 runs—including a splendid 87* against KKR—at a strike rate of 196.25.
In eight matches so far in 2026, he has not reached 20 in a single innings, his strike rate a hard-to-believe 71.68.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
The Super Over was over before you could say Papa Neza. Or say a pooja prayer for Pooran.
Pant slapped the second ball to deep cover for a single. And when Markram clobbered the third ball down to long-on, Powell hared around to his left, snaffled the catch and tossed the ball accurately to the fieldsman approaching from long-off before sprinting over the boundary line.
That fieldsman? Man-of-the-Match Rinku Singh!
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
Fittingly, it was Rinku who pummelled Prince Yadav’s first ball down to the unprotected cover boundary, putting an exclamation mark on a superlative individual performance.
With the two hard-earned points, Narine’s KKR, long the table-proppers, leapfrogged two teams into eighth place. The defeat, LSG’s fifth in succession, pushed them down into tenth.
Both teams will need a lot of luck to get into the playoffs.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
Or in LSG’s case, a return to something like 2025 form by Pooran.
In the post-match interview, Harsha Bogle asked Pant why (t)he(y) had decided on Pooran to partner Markram in the Super Over.
Pant response wasn’t really an answer. It was, he said, “a collective discussion”, adding that “you have to trust your player and stay positive”.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
Translated from Politespeak, here is what that means:
“We wanted to give him a chance to earn some of the big money we’re paying him.”
Narine told Bogle that he was selected to bowl the Super Over by unanimous decision. Players and coaches.
In the regulation game, he had had figures of 4-0-23-1 game. With seven dot balls. He never mentioned it but, in the 2014 CPL, he had bowled a Super Over maiden to Pooran.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
Bogle told Narine that he had won himself a contract for life to bowl the super over for any team of his.
Bogle did not interview Pooran. Even if he had, I doubt he would have told the talented left-hander what I as a Trini want to tell him.
Go down Moruga and get a good bush bath, bro.
Or go up Mt St Benedict and get the priests there to pray for you.
(via ESPN/ BCCI.)
Or see if you can’t find somebody in India to give you a good dharay.
Or cover all bases and do all three. If none works, it’s probably karma.
Seriously reconsider your decision to blank the Maroon.
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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.
