CPL 2018: St Lucia Stars becomes the first team to be knocked out of the tournament
The league round match of CPL 2018 between St Lucia Stars and St Kitts and Nevis Patriots at Warner Park in Basseterre was called off without a toss as incessant rain made the ground unplayable in St Kitts on Friday, August 30.
After multiple inspections, the match officials deemed the pitch and ground conditions unfit for play and decided to abandon the match with both St Lucia and St Kitts getting one point each.
Puddles of water were seen at several areas of the ground and frenetic efforts of the ground staff went in vain as rain finally played the spoilsport.
With the one point from the abandoned match, Stars jumped to fifth spot with five points from eight matches while Patriots remained at fifth position with seven points from eight games.
In an official statement given by Umpires Greg Brathwaite and Nigel Duguid, "There were a lot of areas of concern. Our major concern was some seepage on the pitch, which has gone really deep. Some extremely soft areas on the pitch and we would have to start the game started by 9:16 PM at the latest, and we don't anticipate much to change in the next hour and a half. No chance to get the game started. The game's for the fans, so Gayle or Pollard hitting some sixes and fours would have been nice, but the conditions are just not good enough."
Despite being one of the strongest contenders of CPL this season, this has been yet another disappointing CPL season for the St Lucia Stars who have struggled right through the tournament with just five points out of nine fixtures and were reeling at the bottom of the points table throughout the season.
They, too, have been unlucky at times, with Pollard and co. going great guns and churning out quality performances before going on to lose the key moments of the game and consequently giving the opposition the edge over them.
With just one game to go, maximum points they can get is seven which won't be enough for them to go ahead. While Stars also became the first victim of new punishment rules for slow over rate this season.
In their eighth game against Jamaica Tallawahs The Stars, captained by Kieron Pollard, completed their bowling innings in 94 minutes: nine minutes longer than the permissible 85. As a result, their net run rate was reduced by 0.15.
The new rule, introduced in the Caribbean Premier League this year, punishes teams that fail to complete their 20 overs in the allotted 85 minutes, after taking into account all allowances for stoppages.
In accordance with that, Stars were deemed to be two overs short. The first over results in a docking of 0.05 from the team’s net run rate, with each following over reducing the NNR by 0.10.