The short stop for the Caribbean Premier League at the Queens Park Oval in Trinidad concludes on Wednesday night when the CPL 2023 match between Trinbago Knight Riders and Barbados Royals is played out.
These two teams begin the night locked together in the middle of the table and the winner will end the match in second spot in the table and beginning to control their own destiny in terms of getting two chances at a spot in the final.
Trinbago Knight Riders
The Trinbago Knight Riders began their home leg of the competition with a defeat to the Guyana Amazon Warriors on Tuesday night. The Amazon Warriors are on top of the table so there isn’t an immediate concern with that but the Knight Riders will not want to reach the halfway mark in their home part of the competition with successive defeats as that just opens the door to those in behind them to come along and overtake them.
The real surprise on Tuesday night was how easily their bowlers were put to the sword. It looked like after a slow start they had got themselves up to a total which was probably on the plus side of competitive but that certainly wasn’t how it played out. Whether those bowlers thought the batters had done the job only they will know but they are certainly going to need to offer up more in this match if they are to get the job done.
Barbados Royals
The Barbados Royals have just concluded their home leg of the competition but they didn’t really get themselves in a position of strength from it. They begin the night fourth in the table but only two points ahead of Jamaica Tallawahs and with the second worst net run rate in the competition. Jamaica also have a game in hand on them so were the Royals to lose this they would become outsiders to make it into the top four at the end of the season.
The problem Barbados have is their batting is either everything or nothing and it tends to stem from their opening pair. If one or both of them get going then carnage can ensue as we saw against the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots on Sunday night but should both of them fail then there is an element of them which collapses in a heap. They don’t have too much with the ball either so if the batting doesn’t fire this is a vulnerable team.
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Key Players
Kieron Pollard has shown the best side of himself in this tournament as a finisher with the bat and he generally leads the team well too. He came in very late against Guyana though and might think about pushing himself up the order a little.
Rakheem Cornwall treated everyone to a quite brilliant century in the final match at the Kensington Oval and if he can get away with the bat here it would help the Barbados Royals no end. His spin bowling could be very useful here too.
Betting
Trinbago Knight Riders are very short to win this match and I suspect that is because in the reverse meeting between the two they shot the Barbados Royals out for just 61. I don’t see them making as much of a Horlicks of things this time around though but at the same time I’m not massively keen on their chances. The quirky nature of this tournament means I’m not interested in getting involved on a 4/6 shot, especially one who lost less than 24 hours beforehand.
Instead I’ll go with a player performance and that comes in the form of Rakheem Cornwall who comes into this match off the back of a brutal century in the last match and who also picked up 2-27 from three overs. I think that might be even more relevant here because we saw on Tuesday that there is turn in these tracks at Queens Park Oval and like on Tuesday there is a women’s match before the men. There are also potentially four left-handers in the top eight for the Trinbago Knight Riders. Cornwall will field around the bat as well so he could snap the odd catch so his performance line of 23.5 looks very low to me.
Tips
Back R.Cornwall’s Performance – Over 23.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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