Caribbean Premier League Big Scores And Records
With the global pandemic calling off play across all kinds of competitive sport this season, the decision adopted back in July to host the eighth annual Caribbean Premier League ‘behind closed doors’ came as encouraging news for cricket fans worldwide. With extra protective measures in place and a period of quarantine and testing for the CPL players, the T20 action got underway from the 18th August with the usual League stages.
Caribbean Premier League 2020 Champions
Impressive early performances from the Trinbago Knight Riders cricket team secured them the first spot in the cricket competition finals where they were later joined by St Lucia and Guyana, the latter’s victory over Barbados granting Jamaica the final spot on the Caribbean Premier League 2020. Two initial 50+ innings from the cricketer Sunil Narine were complemented by some exceptional batting from player of the series and Trinbago skipper, Keiron Pollard, who put 72 runs past the Guyana Amazon Warriors in only 28 deliveries!
This run of form continued unceasingly for the Knight Riders cricket team who won all ten of their qualifying matches before beating the Jamaica Tallawahs by 9 wickets in the semi finals and the St Lucia Zouks by 8 wickets in the final! This marks the fourth series win for Trinidad and Tobago, credit to some outstanding cricket, which made for highly entertaining viewing.
Caribbean Premier League 2020 Batting highlights
There were plenty of big hitters worth recapping from the opening matches of the CPL, none more so than the highest scoring batsman of the series, Lendl Simmons, whose 96 runs gave the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots little chance in the qualifiers. Simmons clocked 356 runs in this year’s CPL, an average of 39.55 a game, including an all-important 84 runs in the final to ensure the Knight Rider’s victory over the St Lucia Zouks.
This takes Simmons’ career total since the inception of the Caribbean Premier League back in 2013 to a record 2436 (and his career sixes to 125)! Despite the preeminence of Trinidad and Tobago at this year’s cricket tournament, there was some imposing batting across all teams. Amazon Warriors star, Nicholas Pooran, scored his first T20 century from 45 balls against the Patriots cricketers, a strike rate of 222.22 including 10 sixes and 4 fours. Evin Lewis’s 89 for the Patriots against Barbados Tridents gave him the third-best individual score of the series.
Caribbean Premier League 2020 Bowling Highlights
The most impressive bowling of the series has to be that of the St. Lucia cricket team. In their qualifier against the Patriots, Afghan all-rounder Mohammad Nabi took 5 wickets over 4 overs with an economy of only 3.75. Nabi’s right arm-off break style proved particularly inexpensive for the cricket side against Guyana where a wicket, a maiden over, and only 6 runs conceded put his economy as low as 2.00. He also took the record for most catches of the series taking 8 in 12 games. Over a total of 34.1 overs, Scott Kuggelejn took the most wickets in the series at 17, the next best being Fawad Ahmed and Kesrick William’s 13 each. When it mattered most, however, the Kiwi international cricketer couldn’t match Kieron Pollard’s 4 wickets in the series finale which led the Knight Riders cricket team to Caribbean Premier League glory!