TKR seeking revenge against Tridents

(Trinidad Guardian) Rain is fore­cast for today and it may well con­sume the thoughts of the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) more than their op­po­nents the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents ahead of their Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League se­mi-fi­nal at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do, from 7 pm.

With a place in the fi­nals on the line, should rain wash out the clash the Tri­dents will ad­vance to meet the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors in Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal by virtue of fin­ish­ing high­er than the TKR in the round-robin phase. The Tri­dents fin­ished sec­ond with 10 points and TKR end­ed third with nine points at the end of the six-team com­pe­ti­tion. The TKR had those nine points af­ter six match­es but failed to win a sin­gle match of their fi­nal four to land sec­ond place and an opportunity for two chances at mak­ing the fi­nal.

Checks with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice in­di­cat­ed that there will be spot­ted show­ers this evening and should this be enough to wash the game out, it will be a sad end­ing for the two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons TKR.  Yester­day, how­ev­er, TKR man­ag­er Col­in Bor­de was op­ti­mistic about the sit­u­a­tion.

“We are in the se­mi-fi­nals. The rains are here. At this point, we can on­ly hope that we get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to play and per­form. The road to here has been wind­ing but we are here. We can­not con­trol the rain­fall so we plan our strate­gies ac­cord­ing­ly. We have faith in the de­ci­sions that cap­tain (Kieron) Pol­lard and the coach­es will make as they have faith in the abil­i­ty of the group as play­ers. Let’s play!”

Yesterday the rain belt­ed down on the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my fa­cil­i­ty, which was un­der­wa­ter just af­ter lunch. How­ev­er, the ex­cel­lent drainage at the venue led to the wa­ter drain­ing off quick­ly and this has giv­en op­ti­mism to sta­di­um man­ag­er Haresh Ra­goonath.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports yesterday af­ter­noon, Ra­goonath said: “Yes, we had a lot of rain here to­day and the ground got soaked. How­ev­er, we have ex­cel­lent drainage here and the wa­ter was able to run off quick­ly. The rain we had to­day would not pre­vent crick­et to­mor­row.

“We will have the out­field ready for ac­tion come match time. The on­ly way the match could be in­ter­rupt­ed is if the rain comes down mo­ments be­fore or dur­ing the game.”

Ra­goonath said the traf­fic prob­lems felt in the past would al­so not be the case this time around.

“We have tak­en mea­sures to en­sure that fans reach in­to the ground on time to en­joy the game. We have Park and Ride with shut­tles tak­ing fans from the Wa­ter­front car park to the sta­di­um and then from UTT at Tarou­ba and Corinth straight to the ground.

“We have al­so cut an ad­di­tion­al road that takes pa­trons to and from the ground via the EM­BD east­bound road. This will mean that fans com­ing from the east of the ground like re­form and Princes Town and those ar­eas can ac­cess the ground through the EM­BD road.”

TEAMS

TKR: Kieron Pol­lard (capt), Sunil Nar­ine, Col­in Munro, De­nesh Ramdin, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Chris Jor­dan, Khary Pierre, Jim­my Nee­sham, Seekkuge Prasan­na, Amir Jan­goo, An­der­son Phillip, Mark Deyal, Tion Web­ster, Javon Sear­les, Akeal Ho­sein, Ali Khan.

Tri­dents: Alex Hales, Ja­son Hold­er (capt), Asif Ali, Sandeep Lamich­hane, John­son Charles, Shai Hope, Ash­ley Nurse, Jonathan Carter, Chemar K Hold­er, Leniko Bouch­er, Roshon Primus, Ray­mon Reifer, Justin Greaves, Joshua Bish­op, Hay­den Walsh.