On a pitch where the spinners were dominant the Guyana Amazon Warriors and Jamaica Tallawahs produced a thrilling contest in the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) that was full of twists and turns.
Having been put into bat the Tallawahs made a total of just 100. Their bowlers did a decent job in attempting to defend that target but the Amazon Warriors emerged victorious.
Rovman Powell top-scored for the Tallawahs and for a long time it looked like his contribution would be the difference between the sides. Fresh from his match-winning innings of 77 against the Trinbago Knight Riders, Chris Lynn of the Amazon Warriors had other ideas. Here the Australian made a hugely impressive 39 not out from 35 balls to guide his side to the win.
The Amazon Warriors found batting no easier than the Tallawahs as they reached 13-2 at the end of the six over PowerPlay in pursuit of 101 to win. Imad Wasim bowled three overs for the cost of just four runs at the start of the Amazon Warriors chase, picking up two wickets in the process. He finished with figures of 2-6 off his four overs, the third most economic bowling spell in Hero CPL history.
Lynn played an uncharacteristically restrained innings as he held the chase together. A partnership between Lynn and Jason Mohammed was worth 42 runs but when that stand was broken by Shakib it was down to Lynn’s steadying hand to stave off defeat.
With an under par total on the board it would take something really special for the Tallawahs to defend the lowest score ever made at Providence in Hero CPL, and they came very close to doing just that. If they had managed another 20 runs they could well have been the winning side.
The Tallawahs got off to the worst possible start to the match, their captain and batting superstar Chris Gayle was dismissed lbw to Sohail Tanvir off the first ball he faced.
Things did not improve for the Tallawahs when Veerasammy Permaul came into the attack for the fifth over. First he had Kumar Sangakkara brilliantly caught by Mohammed on the mid-wicket boundary to a catch that needed a full length dive to be claimed. Then Chadwick Walton was out the very next ball, bowled when attempting a sweep.
Those two wickets meant that Rovman Powell and Shakib-al-Hasan were both at the crease and neither man had faced a ball. On a typical Providence surface that was difficult to start on but got easy as a batsman got set the two of them put on a brilliant partnership of 51 runs.
Shakib fell attempting pull a shorter ball from Permaul into the crowd at midwicket but he didn’t get all of it and it was a simple catch for that man Mohammed again. Permaul was the pick of the Amazon Warriors as he finished with a career best 3-20.
Adam Zampa was the second Amazon Warriors bowler to take two in two when he dismissed Nkrumah Bonner and Andre McCarthy in the space of two balls as the Tallawahs were bowled out with two precious overs left unused.
The one Tallawah to stand his ground was Powell who hadn’t played a T20 match before this year’s Hero CPL. He put together an extremely mature 39 from 42 balls, but at the other end the wickets kept on tumbling and in the end that is what cost the Jamaicans.
Match 9, Guyana Amazon Warriors v St Kitts & Nevis Patriots Preview
This match was the first of four home games for the Guyana Amazon Warriors and captain Martin Guptill and coach Roger Harper have been looking forward to what the remaining matches in Providence will hold.
The Guyana pitch has a reputation of being one of the more difficult to acclimatise to and Guptill said it was about giving yourself the opportunity to get settled and relying on experience of playing in Providence in the past.
“Just take your time and enjoy the atmosphere out there. It is tough wicket to bat on and to bowl on as well, we are going to have to execute our plans and our skills to the best of our abilities.
“Most of the guys have played here before, there is only one or two that haven’t played so it is a new thing for them, but I am sure they are going to go great. With the batting we have is explosive all the way down the order. We have just to score one more run than the opposition,” Guptill said.
Coach Harper is feeling confident after the wins in the opening three rounds, but still thinks there is more that his charges can give.
“While we did pretty well in winning our first games I think in each of the areas there are little things that we can do a little better,” Harper said. “Good teams actually perform better than the sum of their individual parts and that is what we are trying to achieve. We have some pretty good players but if we work well as a team we can appear to be even better than we look on paper.”
Brief scores
Guyana Amazon Warriors 101-3 (C Lynn 39*, Imad Wasim 2 for 6) beat Jamaica Tallawahs 100 all out (R Powell 39, V Permaul 3 for 20) by seven wickets with 12 balls to spare.
