Guyana Amazon Warriors continued the Trinbago Knight Riders’ victory at the 2019 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) after testing for St. Kitts & Nevis Patriots at Warner Park.
The Warriors and Knight Riders have now both won four out of four after scoring seven goals for the Guyanese side.
Imran Tahir (2/17) and Qais Ahmad (3/28) led a four-man spin on the Warriors, reducing the Patriots to 53/5 and although Shamarh Brooks unleashed some sort of recovery with a well-done 34, 25 the innings fell off after he left, seaming that finally made an impression when Keemo Paul took the last two wickets into the room of three balls. A grand total of 121 would never be enough and was immediately put into perspective by a 24-ball 49 by Brandon King at the head of the Warriors Pursuit.
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He shattered three fours and a huge hero’s max over Midwicket of Sheldon Cottrell’s second, to make it clear that the warriors were not going to pursue their target.
And when the Patriots tried a spin, it did not work as well as the visitors did. Fabian Allen’s first was taken for 16, including two more big sixes for King.
He was exhausted half a century before the last ball of the power play, but it did not matter. By that time, the Warriors were already 64/1 and more than halfway to their destination.
Shimron Hetmyer made a toe strike with Mohammad Hafeez to stop the attack, causing Chandrapaul Hemraj and Warriors skipper Shoaib Malik to strangle and make sure nothing went wrong.
Hemraj got behind Rayad Emrit for 22 minutes and left Nicholas Pooran (19 *) behind to finish with Malik (24 *) as the Warriors came home with 25 balls.
The start of the game was delayed by a brief rain shower and as the game began, the Warriors had four overs and three different spinners behind them before a sailor was seen.
The tactic paid off when Devon Thomas was crowned by Chris Green’s first ball and after the first four overs of Hemraj, Green and Tahir only 19 runs were on the board.
And even as the faster bowlers came, spinners still made the difference. Evans stroked four times at the age of 26 and looked dangerous as a direct Tahir goal struck him with a short leg.
With bowling of Romario Shepherd and Paul proving to be relatively expensive, Malik immediately turned to the fourth spinner in his ranks when Qais Ahmad Hafeez of Hetmyer hit 14 on his first overtaking manoeuvre. Tahir then set Jason Mohammed off for just 4 minutes to reduce the Patriots to 51/4 in the 9th.
The Patriots made the bold decision to move left-hander Dominic Drakes to sixth to face the risk of breaking his leg on the back of his record-breaking 34 – the highest T20 score of all time, 11 against Barbados Trident’s last break.
It did not work. He was abandoned by Hetmyer but captured by Ahmed two balls later to give Tahir a second wicket from an eventful ending and a night to forget for the Patriots to summarize.
