The Guyana Amazon Warriors will battle the St. Lucia Zouks in the second semifinal of the Caribbean Premier League today from 17.30 hours. The Warriors captain, Chris Green is confident that his side can come good this year but will be banking on a special batting display.
Green, during a pre-match conference via Zoom yesterday, shared his thoughts on the upcoming contest, primarily the batting, which he feels will be the deciding factor in the match.
“I think it is going to come down to the batting. The guys who can get in there, build a partnership, put their hands up and deliver a big score or help the team get a big score and help us set a big score or chase down whatever is set for us,” Green stated. So far, Shimron Hetmyer has been their leading run getter with 267 runs. He has scored three half centuries but has had an up and down tournament with five single figure scores. Nicholas Pooran has also been exceptional for the five-time finalists, scoring the tournament’s lone ton on his way to amassing 234 runs so far.
But the Warriors opening pair has struggled extensively. Brandon King scored an unbeaten 51 recently but only has an aggregate of 116. In his 10 innings, he failed to score on three occasions. King has shared the opening spot with a few partners including Anthony Bramble and Kevin Sinclair but Chandrapaul Hemraj seems to be the most productive in the spot with 115 runs in his seven innings.
On the other hand, the bowling department has been traditionally spin dominated, led by Imran Tahir.
Green indicated that spin has helped all the teams throughout the competition. He said, “I think spin for all teams have played a key part in obviously keeping the runs down and taking wickets, you know Imran Tahir, the wickets and numbers and quality of leg spinners speaks for itself and he has been key to our success and similarly St. Lucia playing a number of off-spinners as well as the Chinaman and Jerval Green has been a revelation for them.”
Tahir has bagged 15 wickets and has been well supported by the spin barrage of Green with nine wickets and the young spin twins in Ashmead Nedd and Kevin Sinclair who both boast an economy rate of under-five and have collectively taken eight wickets.
Looking ahead, the captain pointed out that they will be taking each day at a time and are in a good space, having continuously gotten better after a poor start to their campaign.
“I think the build up to this final series if you’d like has been a bumpy road and through those bumpy roads and journeys, we’ve learned a lot and it has brought us closer as a group. We’ve faced different challenges that we never had to face before so I really do believe we are in a really good place as a group.
We’re a close knit family and we are just excited about this challenging opportunity where we are confident in one and other and we are enjoying each other’s success and I think that’s an important part in going through a successful campaign, the belief is certainly there,” he pointed out.
Green added, “We spoke about learning along the way, we spoke about peaking at the right time and sticking together and showing good character and I think that has been a key part of our success, its taking this tournament one day at a time and our focus today [Monday] is on training and our focus tomorrow will be on St. Lucia and we are not looking too far past that.”
He added, “We are in a really good place as we have been all tournament, we obviously come off a tough week where he had the challenge of playing three back-to-back games, got the ideal outcome of those three games, we’ve enjoyed a rest day and couple of training days.”
Green said that this year comes with new circumstances compared to last season where the only match they lost was the final.
“I think it’s a different year, different circumstances. I think the guys really learnt a lot from the last two years but last year in particular, I think going through that run really hurt us and losing at the final really hurt us but the realization is we still achieved something really amazing and TKR obviously done it this year through their round games and now have the pressure of continuing it,” he said.
