St. Kitts & Nevis Patriots leg-spinner Samuel Badree has admitted that his side are in “must win” territory ahead of their key Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) clash against Barbados Tridents in the Kensington Oval on Wednesday night (8pm).

With the Patriots having won just once from five encounters to date, the West Indies World T20 champion, who produced a fine spell of two wickets for 17 runs against Guyana Amazon Warriors last time out, believes that the squad has the wherewithal, experience and talent to get back to winning ways.

“There’s been a high-scoring encounter most times we’ve played in Barbados. We’ve had some good games against them in the past and I think we need a victory now to really kick-start our campaign. Obviously we’re towards the bottom of the table, so we’re looking with a positive mind-set going into that game against the Tridents and hopefully we can come up with a win there.

“I haven’t been up to standard in this competition thus far, been off the boil a bit and I haven’t had much cricket under my belt. I think (that) now I’m starting to get into the groove of things and hopefully we can out that complete game together. Sometimes our batting clicked, and our bowling didn’t click, and sometimes our bowling clicked and our batting didn’t click. We need to put that complete game together as a Patriots team and then we can see some success.

“Basically all of our games now should be must win, we just need something to go in our favour. I think we’ve been playing well and we have a good team, it’s just that we’ve been on the wrong end of some results. If we can get on the correct end of a result (then) momentum can be built and we can take it from there.
“The competition is a long one. There has only been five games and there are five more to come. There’s a lot of experience there and guys who have been playing this cricket for many, many years. I think we’re calm, we’re not panicking at any stage, but at the same time we need to put in some good performances. Everyone knows that and I think that each player is very confident in their ability and I think you’re going to see some good performances coming towards the back end of the tournament.

“We’ve got to concentrate on ourselves and not really think too much about the competition. Obviously we’re going to plan, but our focus should be on ourselves. Each and every player will do some introspection and see where we can improve as a team, individually and collectively as a team, and not worry too much about the opposition. At the end of the day as long as we play to our full potential then we can win this competition.”

Meanwhile, Shoaib Malik believes that the Patriots will be dangerous opponents as they look to make up for Monday’s wash-out against the Jamaica Tallawahs.
The Pakistan star, who has shown good form with both bat and ball in this year’s Hero CPL so far, is wary of the Patriots threats and knows that the Tridents will need to display controlled aggression once more to secure the win.

“T20 is not about (having) big names, even if you’re not playing good cricket you still always have the opportunity to come back. Even though they didn’t play well in their home conditions, they’re going to bounce back. They’ve got a decent team and I think that in this format all you do is that whatever situation or whatever the conditions are you just go out there and give it your best shot.
“For us, the way we played against them in their home conditions, our aggression was controlled…the same way we’re going to play this game. I’m sure it’s going to be a good battle between two good teams.”