Patrick Noone analyses an extraordinary finish as St Lucia Zouks defend 92 against Barbados Tridents
It’s not been a happy couple of days for Barbados Tridents. In another world, they are sitting pretty after comfortably seeing out two wins from two over Trinbago Knight Riders and St Lucia Zouks and are well set for the playoffs. However, two extraordinary finishes have left them reeling and their qualification hopes in serious danger. Yesterday it was Kieron Pollard; today it was, well, themselves really.
It all started so well for Jason Holder’s side. Bowling out the Zouks for 92 was a solid effort, with Hayden Walsh Jr. the star, picking up 3-19 from his four overs. He has been a thorn in the side of St Lucia Zouks before and now has seven wickets against today’s opposition, giving him a strike rate of just 6.5. In CPL history, no spinner to have taken five wickets or more against a single opponent has done so at a better rate.
He took 3-5 from his last 14 balls, keeping the batsmen guessing with a mixture of googlies and leg-breaks. The Zouks batsmen attacked all but five of those 14 deliveries but were unable to ever score more than a single against him. Walsh couldn’t be kept quiet in the field either, taking three catches to go with his three wickets and, according to CricViz’s fielding collection metric, saving his team a total of 7.5 runs through a combination of those catches and his energetic ground fielding.
It all helped to limit the Zouks to what looked a more than achievable total for the Tridents batting unit. But a combination of terrible shot selection, failure to take responsibility for the run chase and some canny bowling from the Zouks attack left them three runs short in a remarkable finale.
Even going into the last three overs, the Tridents were well in control of the chase, albeit having let it drift a little. 16 runs were needed, and two set batsmen in Corey Anderson and Ashley Nurse were at the crease. Yet when Anderson was bowled by Mohammad Nabi, doubt started to creep in and the tide had turned irrevocably in favour of the bowling side.
The Tridents could hardly lay bat on ball following Anderson’s dismissal – in the subsequent 16 deliveries, they attacked every single one of them, yet edged, missed or mis-timed ten of them and only twice were able to score more than a single.
Zouks captain Daren Sammy made the bold decision to throw the ball to young leg-spinner Javelle Glenn for the penultimate over with the Tridents needing 13. It was a risky move with Kesrick Williams and Scott Kuggeleijn both with overs available, but Glenn repaid his captain’s faith by taking the wicket of Rashid Khan and conceding just four runs.
It was another unconventional choice for the final over as Roston Chase – arguably the Zouks’ man of the tournament – was handed the responsibility. Chase adopted a tactic a firing the ball full outside off-stump and didn’t concede a run from any of his first three deliveries, during which he also picked up the wicket of Nurse.
The game was all but over after that dismissal as Raymon Reifer and Nyeem Young couldn’t get their side over the line. It completed an astonishing result for the Zouks whose dream campaign is going from strength to strength. For the Tridents though, it looked from their bowling performance like they had responded well to yesterday’s defeat; as it turned out, things got a whole lot worse.
Patrick Noone is a CricViz analyst
