TAROUBA: The Indian Premier League (IPL 2020) flavour will be clearly visible in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL 2020) final on Thursday. Both the finalists of CPL 2020 are owned by the IPL team owners.
The finals of CPL 2020 will be contested between Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR) & St. Lucia Zouks. Both the teams have IPL connect.
TKR is owned by Kolkata Knight Riders owners Sharukh Khan and his consortium. While Zouks is owned by KingsXI Punjab team owners Mohit Burman and others.
Call it their experience of managing IPL teams or otherwise but both the teams will now be contesting the finals of CPL 2020.
An inspired St Lucia Zouks skittled perennial finalists Guyana Amazon Warriors for the second lowest team total in Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) history and blazed to victory in just 27 balls to complete one of the most dominant performances in T20 history. In doing so they booked their place against the Trinbago Knight Riders in Thursday’s final, the first in the St Lucia franchise’s history.
Zouks captain Daren Sammy put the Amazon Warriors in, but even he could not have seen this coming. Zouks stunned Warriors by brilliant attacking bowling and wrapped their innings for mere 55 runs. The target was achieved in just 27 balls as they entered their maiden final.
The Trinbago Knight Riders spinners blasted a hole in the Jamaica Tallawahs top order to set up a cruise to a sub-par total with a full five overs to go, and leave themselves one win away from completing the first perfect season in Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) history.
Knight Riders captain Kieron Pollard used his bowlers and placed his fielders to the perfection to restrict Tallawahs for below-par 107-7.
On a hot winning streak of 8 wins, this score was never gonna enough for TKR and as expected they achieved it minimum fuss to register 9 wicket win and just 1 win away from a perfect season.
Simmons now needs just three more runs in Thursday’s final to overtake Gayle as Hero CPL’s all-time leading scorer. Much more importantly though, the Knight Riders have a chance to do what last year’s Guyana Amazon Warriors could not, and in doing so win a fourth Hero CPL title.
Brief scores:
Jamaica Tallawahs 107/7 (Bonner 41, Powell 33; Hosein 3/14, Pierre 2/29, Narine 1/13, Fawad 1/29) lost to Trinbago Knight Riders 111/1 (Simmons 54*, Webster 44*; Mujeeb 1/18) by 9 wickets
Guyana Amazon Warriors 55 all out (Hemraj 25; Deyal 2/2, Zahir 2/12, Kuggeleijn 2/12, Chase 2/15, Nabi 1/6, Glenn 1/8) lost to St Lucia Zouks 56/0 (Cornwall 32*, Deyal 19*) by 10 wickets.
The final: Trinbago Knight Riders vs St. Lucia Zouks on Star Sports & Disney+ Hotstar at 7.30 pm India time on Thursday.
