Top-of-the-table the Guyana Amazon Warriors will take on the Jamaica Tallawahs in their penultimate match of the group stages in the HERO Caribbean Premier League (CPL) tonight at the Providence National Stadium.
The competition so far been one of mixed fortunes for the two sides.
The peerless Warriors are yet to lose a match after eight encounters while two-time champions, Tallawahs, have failed to qualify for the playoffs with just two wins from nine matches.
The final match for the Chadwick Walton-led unit will begin at 19.00 hours and their Head Coach, Donovan Miller believes a win against the most consistent side could do a lot for their confidence as they close off their campaign.
“Obviously it would be a good confidence booster for us, you know. Everyone at the moment has been a bit down and disappointed because we had a huge expectation at the start of the tournament, so you know a win against the team who has obviously been arguably the best team would do the best for us,” Miller stated.
Head Coach of the undefeated hosts, Johan Botha, expressed the team’s enthusiasm at returning to their fortress.
“So far we have obviously played really good cricket,” he said.
“Everyone is fit and healthy and looking forward to playing at home, they did an excellent job on the road to win five in a row and it is great to be back at Providence so all our guys are looking forward to playing at home again,” he added.
Miller, though was not in the same frame of mind as Botha.
“Obviously I wish I could say the same, it hasn’t been the greatest campaign for us,” he declared.
“It has been a tough road for us. We haven’t played the best cricket in patches and, in terms of fit and healthy, we had at one time six fit and ready players on the park so it has hasn’t been the greatest but we are looking forward to tomorrow [today] to give the fans back home something to cheer about,” he added.
Botha reflected that the team has played as a unit and showed their hunger for success which in turn made their job managing the team much easier.
“I think the good thing for us is the players are driving each other to be better and do better and I think at any stage we had to motivate the players.
“We knew what we wanted to achieve at the end of the day and that is still our aim.
“We want to go all the way, now we know which four teams are there [in the playoffs] we can’t look too far ahead. We still want to play good cricket tomorrow against Jamaica, we still respect them as a team, obviously they have a really good team, things might not have gone the way they wanted but we still want to keep playing the way we played and our guys are looking forward to play,” Botha said
Botha said that either Odean Smith or Keagan Simmons would play at least one of the two remaining matches based on the format.
He, however said that he was wary of consistency in the team and the desire to maintain that winning momentum.
“I think Odean [Smith] will have to come in for one more but we would have to play it as we see it coming into Sunday and put one our best teams on Sunday, it would be hard to play all the guys three games in a row, we saw how hard it is at the start of the tournament and our guys really had to dig deep so we need to give the right guys a break at the right time and we still have to discuss that as a management,” Botha related.
Miller, on the other hand, admitted his side did not play good cricket and at crucial times, allowed the opposition to escape from losing positions.
“We definitely didn’t play good cricket. At times we had games to win and let the opposition back in and, in this tournament, you can’t let that happen and once you start losing, sometimes it can become a habit and I think that has happened to us,” Miller admitted.
However, Miller took some positives from the form of Ramaal Lewis and Shamar Springer in a horrible run plagued by injuries.
“If you look at young Ramaal Lewis who plays his cricket here in Guyana and Shamar Springer, those are some of the positives we can look back to with some of the youngsters getting the opportunity this year because of injuries to guys like Rovman Powell and Andre Russell,” Miller noted.
In light of that, Glen Phillips has been an exceptional find for the Tallawahs, leading the run charts with 353 runs with three half centuries so far this season accompanied by a strike rate of 153.
Chris Gayle hasn’t had the best season but has been their second leading run getter with 243 runs and a strike rate of 140.
Contrastingly, the Warriors top four in Brandon King (287 runs), Chandrapaul Hemraj (257 runs) Shimron Hetmyer (203 runs) and Shoaib Malik (180 runs) have all made key contributions to the success of the side.
In the bowling department, Tallawahs have struggled to find a decent bowling attack as they failed to defend 200 plus scores on numerous occasions.
