CPL 2021: Amazon Warriors taste defeat; Royals get first victory
St Kitts & Nevis Patriots 147 for 2 (Lewis 62, Thomas 55*) beat Guyana Amazon Warriors 146 for 8 (Hemraj 39, Hafeez 38*, Drakes 3-26, Fawad 2-33) by 8 wickets
St Kitts & Nevis Patriots made in two wins out of two at the 2021 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) against Guyana Amazon Warriors thanks to wickets from Dominic Drakes and runs from Evin Lewis and Devon Thomas.
The Warriors’ innings stuttered at the beginning before some later order runs took them to a respectable total.
In their first match against the Trinbago Knight Riders, the Warriors defended a similar total. In this match, a stunning opening stand of 113 between Lewis and Thomas took the Patriots to an eight-wicket win.
The Warriors won the toss and elected to bat, but they struggled to get their innings underway in the face of some tidy bowling from the Patriots. Drakes was the star but there were excellent spells inside the PowerPlay from Sheldon Cottrell and Paul van Meekeren.
It was Cottrell who got the first breakthrough when he had Brandon King caught by Sherfane Rutherford off a leading edge. The Warriors once again pushed Odean Smith up the order as a pinch hitter but he didn’t have the same success as in the game against the Knight Riders, falling for a seven-ball duck.
Wickets continued to fall throughout the Warriors innings, and they found themselves 75/5 in the 12th over with Drakes finishing with 3/26 and Fawad Ahmed claiming 2/33. Some lusty blows from Nicholas Pooran and a measured innings from Mohammad Hafeez got them to 146/8.
Thomas and Lewis were in fine form, and they made the Guyana total look under par as they batted with controlled aggression to put the Patriots in complete control of the chase.
There were few alarms for the Patriots as Evin Lewis top scored with 62 from 39 balls, an innings that guided his team to an eight-wicket victory with eight balls to spare.
Royals get first victory
Barbados Royals 161 for 5 (Phillips 56*, Reifer 31*, Permaul 2-15) beat Jamaica Tallawahs 146 for 9 (Brooks 47, Reifer 3-31, Perera 2-17) by 15 runs
Barbados Royals got their first win of the 2021 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) with a comfortable 15 run victory over the Jamaica Tallawahs.
The Royals won the toss and opted to bat first and Glenn Phillips ensured that they put a competitive total on the board with an unbeaten 56 from 46 balls.
In reply the Tallawahs chase was over before it really began as they lost four wickets in the PowerPlay and as a result never kept pace with the run rate.
The Royals opted to make a change to their opening pair – with Shai Hope partnering Johnson Charles and it appeared to work with them putting on 32 run partnership from 20 balls.
However, once Hope was dismissed it sparked a flurry of wickets that left Barbados teetering at 48/3 at the end of PowerPlay. It should have been even worse but Haider Ali dropped Glen Phillips when he was on 2 runs.
Phillips punished that drop in the back end of the Barbados innings hitting a half century with 56 runs from 46 balls and he was ably assisted by Raymon Reifer in a brisk partnership of 79 runs.
161 always looked like 15 runs too many and the Tallawahs got their chase off to the worst possible start losing four wickets inside the PowerPlay.
Some good bowling and electric fielding by Hayden Walsh Jr had the Tallawahs on the back foot throughout.
Carlos Braithwaite and Shamarh Brooks threatened to bring them back into the game with a 66-run partnership but a double strike from Reifer got rid of Braithwaite and Andre Russell in the same over.
Despite some late blows from Miguel Pretorius that made the last few overs interesting there was always too much for the Tallawahs to do once Russell had departed. (CPL T20)
