Guyana Amazon Warriors have won just one of their first three matches in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and skipper, Nicholas Pooran, is keen to have the batting order firing and the bowlers improving on their death bowling going forward.
The captain made those comments during a press conference yesterday where he also shed some light on the mood in the camp.
According to Pooran, “The camp is all good for now. Obviously a little bit disappointed after yesterday’s (Sunday’s) loss but the guys have two days to rest and reflect on what they have done over the last week.”
Warriors were off to a good start, beating defending champions, Trinbago Knight Riders in the tournament opener but lost convincingly to St. Kitts and Nevis Patriots on two occasions.
“For our side, I just feel like the first two games we didn’t really bat properly. In fairness to us, the pitches were a bit challenging. In the third game I just felt like we got to a really good score. I felt like we were five runs short maybe, but we had a good total.”
Nevertheless, the 25-year-old indicated that on a positive note, it was pleasing to see Chandrapaul Hemraj and Mohammad Hafeez share in a big opening partnership
and highlighted that he will be batting higher up the order as the tournament progresses but would ideally like to be at the crease after the first 10 overs.
“We are still batting well as a unit in tough conditions and yeah, it’s I obviously sending a batsman to bat in a certain position. I can’t fault the batsmen for anything yet but we are doing really well so far,” Pooran said. He continued, “The good thing is that it is one team that beat us twice. Obviously we won against Trinidad so I feel like we are still in a really good position because if you look at the points table, St. Lucia [Kings] won all their games and the rest of teams are on two points so the tournament hasn’t really gone anywhere yet. I think every team in this tournament is still looking for their best combination.”
On the other hand, the captain was also critical of both the bowling and fielding performances. He pointed out, “With our bowlers, we didn’t get the early wickets. We struggled with that. We didn’t hit the pitch as much as we wanted to and we couldn’t execute as a death bowling team yesterday (Sunday) as simple as that. Our fielding wasn’t up to par we dropped catches and dropped catches in a T20 game is going to hurt you.”
The left-handed wicketkeeper/batsman however, revealed that a lot is expected of Naveen Ul-Haq and Romario Shepherd but admitted Ul-Haq was a bit inexperienced in a high pressure tournament while Shepherd had to sit out the last two matches after picking up an injury. Warriors’ next assignment will be against the defending champs the Trinbago Knight Riders tomorrow.
