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It has been a long hard jour­ney, even pass­ing every day near the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, which is two min­utes from his home, know­ing that his team played four times there in a Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League fi­nal and came up short.

Guyana Ama­zon War­riors man­ag­er Omar Khan is one of the most pop­u­lar res­i­dents of Gas­par­il­lo, the com­mu­ni­ty where the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my is based. How­ev­er, he will lead his team to bat­tle in his back­yard against the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents on Sat­ur­day from 5 pm in the 2019 fi­nal of the tour­na­ment look­ing for that elu­sive crown.

The for­mer West In­dies man­ag­er has been with the War­riors since the in­cep­tion of the CPL and has tak­en them to the ti­tle-match on four pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions but was turned back at the fi­nal hur­dle each time.

Khan has a long and im­pres­sive his­to­ry as a man­ag­er and over­saw the most suc­cess­ful pe­ri­od in the his­to­ry of T&T's crick­et dur­ing the 2006 to 2009 pe­ri­od, where they won every­thing be­fore them on the com­pe­ti­tion stage.

They have at­tend­ed a Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League wed­ding four times be­fore but as brides­maids. How­ev­er, on Sat­ur­day, the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors will be hop­ing they are the ones throw­ing the bou­quet when they bat­tle the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents in the grand fi­nale at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do, from 5 pm.

Last year they turned up at the same venue and saw their am­bi­tions crushed by a ram­pant Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers.

TKR are not in the af­fair this time so man­ag­er Omar Khan’s team will be look­ing to call the tune when the um­pires start play.

War­riors will be hop­ing a fifth time will be lucky and if it is, they will be­come the first team in the his­to­ry of the tour­na­ment to play un­beat­en and lift the tro­phy.

The War­riors will be hop­ing that the lo­cal fans give them the sup­port to go all the way as well.

Nev­er­the­less, skip­per Shoaib Ma­lik is con­fi­dent of vic­to­ry.

Fans at to­mor­row’s Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League fi­nal be­tween the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents will be able to do so with­out hav­ing to walk around with cash in their pock­ets when they are seek­ing re­fresh­ments from the con­ces­sion­ar­ies at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba.

This is be­cause Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, the of­fi­cial CPL bank­ing part­ner, is un­veil­ing its pi­o­neer­ing wear­able pay­ment plat­form at the match, which bowls off at 5 pm and will be pre­ced­ed by a women’s T10 match be­tween the NL­CB Rev­ellers and the Courts Glad­i­a­tors from 12.30 pm.

In a re­lease Fri­day, RBL said 1,500 lucky crick­et fans at the dou­ble­head­er will re­ceive a wrist­band pre-loaded with $50 to be spent at the ded­i­cat­ed Con­tact­less Carib Bar. The com­pa­ny said each wrist­band is PIN-pro­tect­ed and will con­nect wire­less­ly to al­low in­stant cash-free pur­chase.

“We want to make sure that our pay­ment so­lu­tions match the needs and ex­pec­ta­tions of the mod­ern Caribbean cus­tomer. Our con­tact­less wrist­bands will take the time and ef­fort out of buy­ing a drink, so pa­trons at the Hero CPL fi­nal can fo­cus on en­joy­ing the crick­et. This is a gi­ant leap in the dig­i­tal pay­ment cul­ture for the Caribbean,” RBL Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Der­win How­ell said in the re­lease.

“This is the first in a se­ries of in­no­v­a­tive pay­ment so­lu­tions that Re­pub­lic Bank will roll out in the com­ing months.”