Roston Chase is turning out to be the find of the tournament as far as the Caribbean Premier League 2021 is concerned. The batting all-rounder, mostly known for his brilliant drives in the longest format has remodelled and redefined himself in the shortest format as he led his team, St Lucia Kings, to yet another victory over the table-toppers St Kitts and Nevis Patriots.
Though Chase scored an unbeaten 51 off 38 balls to take the Kings home, talented spin bowler Jeavor Royal deserves equal credit for bundling out the Patriots for only 118. Royal picked up three crucial wickets of dangerman Evin Lewis and dangerous-looking Asif Ali.
The Kings’ chase wasn’t ideal as they lost Andre Fletcher on the very first ball to Fabian Allen. Last match centurion and Kings’ skipper Faf du Plessis then partnered with Keron Cottoy and the two could only put up 33 runs before du Plessis was removed by Allen once again.
It was then that Chase entered the chase and partnering first with Cottoy and then with Samit Patel and Tim David made sure that the Kings reached the target with 26 balls left to improve their net run rate, which had already received a boost after the men in blue had beaten Patriots by 100 runs in their previous encounter on Saturday, September 04.
With this win, the Kings completed a 2-0 sweep against the patriots in CPL 2021 and till now they are the only team to have defeated the Patriots in this year’s league.
Earlier in the morning, Patriots, who were led by stand-in skipper Chris Gayle in Dwayne Bravo’s absence chose to bat after winning the toss. Their decision however wasn’t backed up by their batters as they lost three wickets including those of Gayle and Lewis in the first five overs itself when the score hadn’t even reached 30 runs. When Sherfane Rutherford got run out in the 10th over with the team’s score 59-5, it became clear that the Patriots weren’t really going to score big.
Apart from Fabian Allen, no other battery was able to get going as the Patriots got all out for 118 in the 20th over. Allen made 34 off 32 balls. For Kings, apart from Royal’s three wickets, Wahab Riaz and Samit Patel picked two wickets as well.