Sakib al Hasan’s Barbados Tridents defeated Tamim Iqbal’s St Lucia Jouks by 17 runs in the curtain-raiser of the inaugural Caribbean Premier League in Bridgetown, Barbados on Wednesday.
Pakistani all-rounder Shoaib Malik and West Indian Kieron Pollard guided Barbados to the victory over St Lucia with their all-round efforts, while neither Sakib nor Tamim managed to announce their arrival.
Shoaib made an aggressive 71 runs, while skipper Pollard scored unbeaten 67 runs to help Barbados post 169-5. The big West Indian then picked up three wickets to help their dismiss St Lucia for 152 runs in 19.4 overs to open Barbados’ account with a win.
With the Tridents reeling at 30-2 after five overs, Sakib failed to seize the opportunity at number four, scoring five runs before being caught behind smartly by Andrew Fletcher off Darren Sammy’s bowling when the former West Indian skipper tempted Sakib to play a rash shot after hitting a boundary off the previous delivery.
Shoaib began to display his explosive batting, hammering eight fours and a huge six over mid-wicket off South African pace bowler Pascal on his way to 78 before being dismissed by pace bowler Tino Best.
Pollard took over after Shoaib’s departure and went on to hammer three huge sixes to end his innings on an unbeaten 61, enthralling the home crowd.
St Lucia’s openers Fletcher and Tamim put up 57 runs in 5.1 overs, with the latter looking hardly troubled by the foreign conditions when he opened his account with a four off the very first delivery from Gabriel.
Tamim followed with a flurry of strokes and looked well on course to make a reasonable score but eventually had to pay the price for trying to play to the crowd.
The Bangladeshi left-hander unnecessarily went down the wicket after off-spinner Ashley Nurse was introduced, only to present him with a wicket off his first delivery as the batsman missed the line and allowed Umar Akmal to remove the bails without difficulty.
Earlier, Fletcher welcomed Sakib to the attack by hitting him for two towering sixes in consecutive deliveries that looked to unsettle the line of the bowler for the remainder of his spell.
Sakib never looked to be himself and went on to
surrender 29 runs in two overs before Pollard removed him from the attack. Nurse then removed Fletcher to claim his second wicket and a mini collapse followed.
St. Lucia could not recover and lost their
remaining eight wickets for 57 runs, with Pollard picking up 3-15 to lead
his Barbados side from the front after his selection as captain was questioned by some because he is Trinidadian.
-With New Age input
