Allen took figures of 1-13 as the West Indies restricted Sri Lanka to 131 for 4 despite an unbroken fifth-wicket stand of 85 between Dinesh Chandimal, who made 54 and Ashan Bandara who was unbeaten on 44.
Allen, who was also outstanding in the field, taking a blinder off his own bowling and saved several runs fielding in the outfield, then, with the West Indies needing 20 runs from the last two overs, smashed three sixes in the penultimate over of the match to propel the West Indies to victory.
"I prepare for everything, including bowling in the Powerplay. I just backed myself and executed,” Allen said afterwards. The pitch is very slow, so I just needed to execute my plans.”
He said he backed his team to win despite their struggles against the Sri Lankan spinners, who once again, troubled the West Indies batsman getting five of the seven West Indies wickets to fall.
However, admitting his own struggles, he revealed the plan concocted between Jason Holder and himself that helped the West Indies over the line. Like the other batsmen before him, Allen had trouble reading Hasaranga de Silva’s spin, especially the googly that he uses quite liberally.
Recognizing that weakness, he hatched a plot with the West Indies Test captain.
“I told Jason Holder that I'm not comfortable batting against Hasaranga, so I told him to bat him out and I'll be finishing. I just backed myself in the end. It was a good performance overall."
Not only did Holder bat out the over, but he also took advantage of a rare no-ball from the Sri Lanka spinner, smashing his ‘free-hit’ delivery for six which reduced the West Indies’ task of 27 from 18 balls, to 20 from 12.
In the next over bowled by Akila Dananjaya, Allen took care of the rest.
The Patriots won the toss and opted to field first and that appeared to have backfired when Johnson Charles and Faf Du Plessis put on a blistering opening partnership that saw them post 61 runs in the PowerPlay.
However, much like their performance against the Guyana Amazon Warriors, the Kings faltered badly in the back end of their innings losing nine wickets for 75 runs.
Despite the stuttering end to their innings, the 161-9 the Kings posted always looked tricky and the Patriots got off to a bad start in the PowerPlay losing three wickets for 48 runs.
They never recovered from that position as the Kings blew them away with an excellent performance in the field. Tim David led the way with a Hero CPL record-equalling five catches in the outfield.
The Kings needed a good performance in this must-win game and led by captain Faf Du Plessis’ 60 runs from 35 balls they set off very quickly.
Ably assisted by the in-form Johnson Charles the pair put on 86 for the first wicket but once Charles fell the Kings innings fell away. They regularly lost wickets in clusters and when Alzarri Joseph departed for a duck with the score on 124-7 it looked as if the Kings may not see out the overs.
However, late hitting from Matthew Forde ensured the Kings were able to post a par score of 161.
The Patriots' innings was in deep trouble very early on in reply. Matthew Forde ripped through the top three to leave the Patriots teetering at the end of the Powerplay.
From that point, the Patriots failed to build any meaningful partnership as their top order continued to struggle.
When Alzarri Joseph removed Darren Bravo for 20 to leave the Patriots on 81-6, that was the last of the recognised batters and the innings soon ended with the Patriots ending on 100 all out.
Saint Lucia Kings 161-9 (Du Plessis 60, Charles 41; Pretorius 3-37, Dananjaya 2-30) beat St Kitts & Nevis Patriots 100 (Lewis 24, Bravo 20; Wiese 3-17, Forde 3-19) by 61 runs.
