Ian Wa­son

Sport Cor­re­spon­dent

ian1wa­son60@gmail.com

Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) cap­tain Nicholas Pooran is hop­ing that his team makes use of its home ad­van­tage on the Trinidad leg of the tour­na­ment, start­ing tonight at Queen’s Park Oval, Port-of-Spain at 7 pm.

The Knight Rid­ers’ first home test is against 2024 cham­pi­ons St. Lu­cia Kings, who are cur­rent­ly sec­ond on the ta­ble with six points.

TKR had mixed re­sults in their open­ing three match­es, which start­ed with a 19-run DLS win over the St. Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots in St. Vin­cent on Au­gust 8, and sev­en days lat­er the team suf­fered a five-wick­et loss­es to the Ja­maica Kings­men in An­tigua and the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons at North Sound, An­tigua.

Speak­ing af­ter the loss to the Fal­cons, Pooran re­mained op­ti­mistic about play­ing at home.

“We’re go­ing back home, los­ing two games out of three. Ob­vi­ous­ly a tough place (An­tigua), but again, every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, and it hap­pens in its time,” Pooran ex­plained.

Pooran who missed TKR’s first game of the sea­son against St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots in St Vin­cent, scored 44 off 32 balls in his first match against Ja­maica Kings­men at Sabi­na Park on Au­gust 15, and he fol­lowed that up with 43 off 17 balls against An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons on Sat­ur­day in An­tigua.

Pooran said, “So for us, hope­ful­ly we can have a good home leg as well and see where it goes from there.”

The Knight Rid­ers will be bank­ing on the form of the bats­men to put up im­pos­ing to­tals for their bowlers to de­fend, some­thing they failed to do twice this sea­son. De­spite the strug­gles of the bowlers, the skip­per is back­ing them.

“We have three qual­i­ty spin­ners and ob­vi­ous­ly two fast bowlers there,” Pooran high­light­ed. It’s def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be a chal­lenge for us this tour­na­ment, es­pe­cial­ly when the wick­ets are re­al­ly good and our spin­ners are not get­ting wick­ets. It is what it is, and we just have to con­tin­ue to back our guys 100%, and hope­ful­ly next time in this sit­u­a­tion it’s a dif­fer­ent re­sult.”

Com­ing against the TKR, the Kings will have a ‘Pooran’ of their own, an­oth­er Trinida­di­an, Kamil.

Kapil Pooran is cur­rent­ly sec­ond on the Most Runs list with 168 runs, in­clud­ing two fifties.

The Marchin Pa­tri­ots bats­man ad­mit­ted play­ing against the TKR wasn’t his orig­i­nal plan, but he will put his best foot for­ward for the Kings.

“Grow­ing up, you al­ways want to play for your na­tion­al team, TKR. Per­son­al­ly, for me, it’s just an­oth­er team,” Pooran ad­mit­ted.

“I’m go­ing to just play ball. I don’t re­al­ly know names. Ob­vi­ous­ly, I know I have a lot of fans and I will try to do my best for them.”

The match against the Kings is the first CPL fix­ture at the Queen’s Park Oval since 2024.

So far, TKR cap­tain, Pooran is the lead­ing bats­man with 87 runs from his two match­es to date.

Mean­while, Ter­rance Hinds is TKR’s lead­ing wick­et-tak­er with six wick­ets, Us­man Tariq has four, and Sunil Nar­ine has just three.

Fans at­tend­ing this evening’s match are re­mind­ed that um­brel­las, cool­ers, bot­tles, cam­eras, back­packs, food, and cig­a­rettes are not al­lowed at the venue.

TKR Squad

Nicholas Poooran, Matthew Breet­zke, Joshua Da Sil­va, Jyd Goolie, Alex Hales, Col­in Munro, Dex­ter Sween, Amshi De Sil­va, Do­minic Drakes, Nathan Ed­ward, Justin Greaves, Sunil Nar­ine, Kieron Pol­lard, Matth­we Tromp, Ter­rance Hinds, Akeal Ho­sein, Ab­dul-Ra­heem Top­pin and Us­man Tariq.

Kings Squad

Ros­ton Chase, Jew­el An­drew, Ac­k­eem Au­guste, An­dries Gous, Jo­hann Je­re­mi­ah, Kamil Pooran, Tim Seifert, Charith Asalan­ka, Amari Goodridge, Dar­ren Nedd, Obus Pien­aar, Shadley van Schalk­wyk, Joshua Bish­op, McKen­ny Clarke, Matthew Forde, Keon Gas­ton, Damion Joachim, Ma­heesh Theek­shana and Noor Ah­mad.