Guyana Amazon Warriors booked their place in the 2018 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) final after edging past Trinbago Knight Riders by two wickets on a thrillingly tense night in Providence.
Rain throughout much of the day resulted in difficult batting conditions throughout this Playoff clash, in stark contrast to a couple of nights ago when the Warriors blitzed the same opponents with a quick-fire run-chase in the final group-stage game.
But the Warriors’ heroes from that night, Shimron Hetmyer and Sherfane Rutherford, combined again to rescue Guyana’s chase of the Knight Riders’ 122/7 from the depths of 52/5 after 12 overs.
Having got the target down to 21 from 20 balls both men then fell in successive balls to leave the game back in the balance, and when Rayad Emrit edged Dwayne Bravo to Denesh Ramdin for just a single the momentum appeared to have lurched decisively the way of the Knight Riders once more with 18 runs still needed from 13 balls and just two wickets remaining.
Romario Shepherd had other ideas, though, launching his first ball for a huge six down the ground and adding another boundary in the next over to leave the Warriors needing just four runs from the final over.
Still this extraordinary game was not quite done. Just one run came from the first four balls of Dwayne Bravo’s final over to leave the equation standing at three runs needed from two balls.
Sohail Tanvir then brought the curtain down on a memorable night’s cricket with a thumping strike down the ground for six to spark scenes of jubilation at a charged Providence Stadium.
Having seen eight overs of spin from Chris Green and Imran Tahir produce combined figures of 3/30 on a pitch offering prodigious turn, Knight Riders skipper Dwayne Bravo gambled on front-loading the run-chase with his own deadly trio of spinners.
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