Daren sammy: “I see TKR as Goliath. They are the Goliath of the tournament, but as I told my men: ‘don’t forget that David defeated Goliath.’
Kieron pollard: “How long was that?”
The captains of the last two teams in CPL 2020 set the stage perfectly for Friday’s final. Pollard’s Trinbago Knight Riders have been so dominant that they have won all 11 of their games in the run-up to their final fourth appearance. On the other hand, Sammy’s St Lucia Zouks have beaten tremendous odds to enter their first CPL final.
Sammy believes that the Zouks can still topple the Knight Riders if they continue to meet and execute their plans under pressure.
“Everybody knew it before we left and since the tournament started, we said that whoever has to win the tournament must go through TKR. That was a given, and if you have to win the tournament you have to beat TKR.” Sammy said. on the eve of the final.
“And that’s what remains to be done. They’ve played a really exciting and dominant brand of cricket, but, like I said, we have the quiet confidence in our team. They play well as a unit by dominance and we play well as a unit in which we come together and believe in ourselves. “
The last time these two teams met in the second leg of the tournament at Brian Lara Cricket Academy, the Zouks had made the Knight Riders dig deep. They got rid of the Knight Riders’ starters quite early, then pinned Tim Seifert and Darren Bravo in the middle orders, but Pollard pitched three-something-sixes on death to lift his side to 175-for-5. Former Knight Rider Mark Deyal and Andre Fletcher each made 40-somethings for the Zouks, but Pollard and Dwayne Bravo’s experience overcame them. Both players extended their lines and restricted hitters from targeting the smaller limits.
Pollard admitted that the Zouks “pushed” them last week, but stressed that past records would count for nothing in the final. Instead, he relied on the Knight Riders’ vast experience in the finals to help them overcome the final hurdle. Pollard and Bravo have appeared in 43 T20 finals between them, and no one has more T20 titles than the two of them; both are tied at 13.
“Four other teams would have liked to be in a position that they both are in,” Pollard said. “So you just have to go out there and play good, consistent cricket and at the end of the day, the result takes care of itself. One good thing is that we have guys who would have played a lot of finals before, so [that helps] to calm the nerves of guys who are new to these things.
“Once again, last year we were quite disappointed to lose in the semi-final. We made some changes and we came in with a different kind of mindset this year and it has shown on the cricket field, so it’s just a matter of jumping the last hurdle. and hopefully be four times champions. “
Among the changes the Knight Riders made for this season was letting Denesh Ramdin go and giving homegrown players like left-arm right-hander Akeal Hosein, who was man of the match in the first semifinal, and top-tier hitter Tion Webster. . greater exposure. While some of those changes have been forced, with Colin Munro (broken finger), Sunil Narine (kidney stones) and Ali Khan (torn hamstrings) not in shape during various stages of the tournament, he has provided a glimpse to the next generation Caribbean players.
“We were in a position where we could put these guys on the team and in the tournament and give them visibility,” Pollard said of giving new faces a chance. “Because when you look at it and when you look at what has happened in the CPL in the last seven or eight years, you tend to continue recycling old ones because you don’t have that other [domestic T20] tournament where you can discover other talents in the Caribbean, not only Trinidad and Tobago, also Jamaica, Barbados.
“If I was a little critical, yeah, the pitches haven’t been up to the mark in terms of hitting, but what I’ve seen is the guys haven’t mentally changed their game to suit the conditions.”
Kieron pollard
“We had the Caribbean T20, but now that’s no more. Akeal Hosein would have come in, Tion would have come in without expecting to play many games, but when you look at they have played four to five games and they have been stars in what they have done. So we have talent on the bench, it’s just a question of exposure. Mark Deyal was with us last year, he played only a couple of games, but he went to St. Lucia and played more than half games. So, we have talent, but there is one thing. That is holding us back and that’s something we need to consider if we want to raise the young and future generations of West Indian cricketers. “
With the Caribbean T20 scrapped, Sammy echoed Pollard’s comments, saying it was not “ideal” to pick players for the CPL from the four-day and one-day tournaments.
‘You can’t complain about the pitches’
One of the main talking points this season has been the nature of the fields, and the entire tournament was played in Trinidad in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some teams have struggled to chase totals below 100, with the five-time finalists, the Guyana Amazon Warriors, who the Zouks passed for 55 in the second semifinal. Both Pollard and Sammy declined to blame the pitches, and the Knight Riders captain noted that West Indian batsmen have also been unable to adapt to different pitches in international cricket.
“If I were a little critical, yeah, the pitches haven’t been up to the task in terms of hitting, but what I’ve seen is that the guys haven’t mentally changed their game to suit the conditions,” Pollard said. “And that is something that not only has happened to us in CPL, but it has also happened to us in international cricket.
“You can’t complain about pitches all the time when [are] do not change as individuals. I didn’t see the mental toughness of other teams’ hitters throughout the tournament. In all honesty, we TKR have tried to adjust to the situation that has arisen because in the same games we score more than 180, but the teams score 70 and 80 and there is a huge disparity there. If you go to Australia, where the pitches are game, what will you say? Don’t get bouncy slopes in the Caribbean? We can’t keep making excuses; we go to Sri Lanka where the fields are turning and things like that. “
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