Five overs into the match in Port-of-Spain, it looked like visiting side Barbados Tridents would be runaway winners. Then, Dwayne Bravo joined Hashim Amla at the crease, and the game changed. Dwayne Bravo and Amla came together with Trinbago Knight Riders 20 for 4 - with Brendon McCullum, Colin Munro, Darren Bravo and Umar Akmal already dismissed - and went on to record the highest ever fifth-wicket partnership in T20 cricket. Their stand of 150 came at almost ten to the over, eventually consigning Tridents to a 11-run defeat.

Tridents put Knight Riders in, and struck their early blows through the left-arm spin of Akeal Hosein and pace of Ravi Rampaul. Hosein was the first to break through, bowling the New Zealand pair of McCullum and Munro with balls that held their lines, before Rampaul had Darren Bravo and Akmal caught behind. The next bit of success any Tridents bowler enjoyed came off the very last ball of the innings, when Amla was out for 81. His innings came off 54 balls and included four sixes, two of which came in his South Africa team-mate Wayne Parnell's final over. That over, the 17th of the innings, went for 19 runs; Amla hit the second ball into the stands down the ground and hooked the third for six more.

Dwayne Bravo hit four sixes of his own, in a knock of 66 not out off 46. The partnership was the highest for any wicket in the CPL.

Tridents were off to a decent start in their chase, with Steven Taylor and Kyle Hope putting on 41, before Hope was lost just as the Powerplay concluded. That Taylor survived that long was down to a good chunk of luck in the first over: off the second ball, Taylor skied one which fell in the middle of three fielders, before Munro dropped a straightforward chance at long-on - parrying it for six, to make matters worse for Knight Riders.

But neither Taylor nor Hope could score at a rapid rate, a trend that continued with Shoaib Malik and AB de Villiers. Malik managed to become the tenth player to 6000 T20 runs during his innings off 28 off 24, while de Villiers scratched his way to 12 off 14 before falling to that man Dwayne Bravo. Kieron Pollard registered a golden duck while attempting an ambitious shot off seamer Kevon Cooper, and with Sunil Narine at his miserly best, Knight Riders were in control. The only real threat to them came from Nicholas Pooran, who slammed 33 off 12 from No. 6, but a run-out ended his challenge prematurely.