New Zealand import Colin Munro believes his team Trinbago Knight Riders can stop a red hot St Lucia Zouks in their 2016 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) play-offs but the senior players must step up to the challenge.
TKR ended fourth in the prelims of the tournament and will now play the third place St Lucia Zouks at Warner Park in St Kitts tomorrow night at 7pm.
Munro who has scored 376 runs at an average of 40.75 with a century and three half centuries in the tournament so far said: “I think we just need to ask more of the same in terms of players stepping up, senior guys stepping up. It is nice looking back at the whole tournament with people stepping up in different situations. So if we got three or four players playing to their potential, our team is pretty dynamic.”
The Knight Riders had a mixed start to the tournament in their home leg in Trinidad, but they came back from that to make the knockout stages. They didn’t panic and Munro says that is indicative of his side.
“We all have that calm nature about us. Obviously it is a must win game but at the end of the day it is a game of cricket and we are approaching every game like that after having a not great home leg. The experience in our group in terms of tournaments that we have won and great coaching staff we will be nice and relaxed and just go out there and express ourselves as best as we can.”
The record between these teams is one win each and Munro says that the Zouks are a dangerous side who should be respected.
“You go through their batting line up and you get a wicket and you have Mike Hussey coming in and you get another wicket and you have David Miller coming in! They have batters all the way down. There are some areas where we can work to get the backup bowling right and if we can get that right we have shown that we can chase down totals and if we set totals we can get a lot of runs on the board.”
The Zouks have won five of their last six games so remain the form team of Hero CPL right now, but that one loss came against TKR. Despite this, Shane Watson of the Zouks feels his team are in a really good place heading into this must win match.
Watson is not underestimating the TKR team however. “They have matched up really well against us. The last time we played against them in St Lucia, Umar Akmal played an incredible innings. They have certainly got some very dangerous players like Hashim Amla who is back at the top of the order. We are certainly going to have to be at our very best because TKR have a really well balanced team with world class players throughout. We played very well against them in Trinidad at the start of the tournament so we need to bring that again.”
