BY JOHN RAMSINGH in Port of Spain
Fresh off a four-wicket victory in their opening game against the St. Kitts and Nevis Patriots, the Guyana Amazon Warriors are high in confidence heading in to tonight’s game against their inspired hosts in match 5 of the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) at the Queen’s Park Oval, Trinidad and Tobago.
After their opening defeat to the St. Lucia Zouks, the Trinbago Knight Riders bounced back beautifully to beat the Barbados Tridents in a high scoring match last night at the Queen’s Park Oval but they are not yet at their optimum and a great contest is in the making.
Manager of the Guyana Amazon Warriors, Omar Khan said after the team arrived in Port of Spain from Basseterre, the guys are high in confidence after their close game against the Patriots and will look to continue their winning ways on the road.
Khan said, as a team they have discussed the importance of winning away matches and they intend to do so before the four home matches in Guyana.
The openers; Martin Guptill and Dwayne Smith, who put on 62 for the first wicket will look to continue in that same method laying the foundation for the middle and lower order to launch a late assault. However, the rest of the batting is short of work with Chris Lynn and Chris Barnwell failing to make a big impact in the Warriors run chase of 164.
In his CPL debut Anthony Bramble looked the part and with Jason Mohammed who had a magnificent innings of 42 from 29 balls the batting looks settled.
Traditionally, the Guyana franchise bowling department revolves around the spinners and the trio of Veerasammy Permaul, Devendra Bishoo and Adam Zampa (3/34) have picked themselves for tonight’s key match on what can be deemed a spin friendly Queen’s Park track.
The seamers; Sohail Tanvir (4/20), Smith and Rayad Emrit (1/37) bowled half of the overs and picked up 5 of the 9 Patriots wickets on the small Warner Park ground and will be asked to once again put their hands up to do the bulk of the bowling especially in the night dew which may cause the spinners not to have the perfect grip which is the only concern for Omar Khan.
The Manager said, the time of the match is their only concern since the bowlers will be affected by the heavy dew at nights in Trinidad while the’ Narine-factor’ could also be an area for concern.
Sunil Narine who played the first three seasons of CPL as a member of the Guyana Amazon Warriors team will come against the house tonight as he returns to his homeland. In his two outings in the Trinbago Knight Riders uniform Narine has four wickets so far, picking up 2 per game but it’s the rest of the bowling that looks weak. Bravo and Sulieman Benn have 3 wickets each, Kevon Cooper got 2 against the Tridents while Ronsford Beaton and Nikita Miller are wicket-less but all bowled very expensive spells.
In two innings the Knight Riders got to 162/6 and 170/5 but were struggling before partnerships towards the end of their innings propped them up. In the first match against the Zouks it was Umar Akmal (30) and Darren Bravo (63 not out) who rescued them from 58/3 in 9 overs.
In their game against the Tridents on Friday night it was Amla and Dwayne Bravo who added 150 for the fifth wicket in 15.2 overs after the top order was blown to be reduced to 20/4 in the fifth over. So lots will depend on Amla, Almal and the Bravo brothers again, while the Knight Riders will hope for a change in fortunes from Brendon Mc Cullum who made 12 and 1 so far and Colin Munro 11 and 6.
The action begins at 21:00 hrs and a capacity crowd is expected as tickets were sold out well in advance for the match.
Trinbago Knight Riders: Dwayne Bravo (capt), Hashim Amla, Ronsford Beaton, Sulieman Benn, Darren Bravo, Yannic Cariah, Kevon Cooper, Anton Devcich, Hamza Tariq, Brendon McCullum, Nikita Miller, Colin Munro, Sunil Narine, William Perkins, Anderson Phillip, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Javon Searles, Umar Akmal.
Guyana Amazon Warriors: Martin Guptill (capt), Ali Khan, Chris Barnwell, Devendra Bishoo, Anthony Bramble, Rayad Emrit, Assad Fudadin, Shimron Hetmyer, Steven Jacobs, Steven Katwaroo, Chris Lynn, Jason Mohammed, Veerasammy Permaul, Orlando Peters, Dwayne Smith, Sohail Tanvir, Paul Wintz, Adam Zampa.
