RBCPL24: Motie, Tahir skittle St Lucia Kings as defending champions, GAW, go top

7, 20, 15, 1, 5, 0, 45, 4, 1, 1.

In a tournament where batsmen have so far dominated, those were the paltry partnerships the Saint Lucia Kings managed against Guyana Amazon Warriors at the Daren Sammy National Stadium in Gros Islet on Saturday.

Their round 100 total never challenged the defending champions, who reached  their target in the tenth over for the loss of only four wickets.

Openers Rahmanullah Gurbaz and new arrival Tim Robinson raced to 64 in the powerplay to set up the winning response. But the easy path to victory was cleared by skipper Imran Tahir (3/29) and Man-of-the-Match Gudakesh Motie (3/16), who together put the skids under the Kings middle and lower order after the quicks had removed the top.

“I am just happy that it came out nicely,” Tahir told the post-match interviewer, “and I did the job for my team. I believe everyone did their job from the start.”

Motie agreed, praising his “fantastic” captain and saying that he bowled well, hit the right areas and got the ball to spin both ways.

Because of the wet outfield, he said, “it was hard to grip the ball. Key was to put the ball in the right areas and it worked for me.”

But Motie’s contribution to the Kings’ demolition really began with the run-out of Ackeem Auguste after Dwaine Pretorius had sent back the skipper, LBW in only the second over.

He picked up the ball cleanly off a Johnson Charles push and, with the batsmen hesitating about whether or not to attempt the run, sprinted smartly in to break the stumps at the bowler’s end.

Keemo Paul (2/19) then exposed the middle order to the wiles of the two spinners by removing Charles (19) and number four Bhanuka Rajapaksha (7) in the same over.

The critical moment of the Kings’ innings came in Motie’s third over, the 13th. From a perilous 49 for 6 after seven overs, Matthew Forde (31, 21b, 2×6, 3×4) and Tim Seifert (12, 16b, 1×4) had put together a 45-run stand, with Forde doing most of the scoring.

Seifert, hero of the Kings’ spectacular come-from-behind win over the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in Match 5, was scratching around unconvincingly, reprieved at 81 for 6 by a clumsy Azam Khan flub and again, at 94 for 6, by a DRS review.

With the first ball of the next over, Motie induced the false shot from Forde and Junior Sinclair gleefully pouched the chance at long-off.

The end came swiftly after that.

In his last over, Tahir, who had earlier sent back Roston Chase for two and the dangerous David Wiese for a golden duck, put Seifert out of his misery.

The wicketkeeper/batsman’s DRS review proved unsuccessful this time. Motie needed only three balls of his last over to account for Noor Ahmad and Alzarri Joseph. Those two wickets took his tally in the competition so far this season to nine, more than anyone else.

“Tonight was not our night,” was the terse assessment of his team’s batting performance by Kings’ captain Faf du Plessis, who seemed to rue losing the toss.

“Extremely disappointing. What we did wrong there batting first on a pitch that was tacky. When you lose wickets like that consistently…

“Most of our batters giving their wicket away [is] something to work on.”

To say that the Warriors batsmen gave their hands away would be more than a little unfair to Ahmad. Amid the carnage of Gurbaz’s 47—off 19 balls with no fewer than seven sixes—and Robinson’s rapid 33 off 20 balls, the left-arm wrist-spinner had figures of 3/22 with a high percentage of dot balls.

He claimed the first two scalps bowled and LBW and then added Shai Hope’s, thanks to a catch on the boundary as the Warriors sought to capitalize on the small target to push their net run-rate up.

But for all his undoubted skill, neither he nor his skipper would realistically have hoped to see their bowlers successfully defend 100.

The first leg of this year’s tournament wraps up on Sunday with a bottom-of-the-table clash between the Saint Kitts and Nevis Patriots and the Antigua and Barbuda Falcons at Warner Park in Saint Kitts.

The venue has been the mecca of high scores in the CPL, not just in the current season but over the many years of the tournament’s existence.

Given the way things have gone for these two teams so far this season, no one should be surprised if one of them were asked to defend 100—and won or lost the game off the last ball.

Or if they have to settle for a point each as the heavens open, marking the first wash-out of the season.

Neither outcome is in prospect for the Kings’ next clash on Tuesday, when they host  Keiron Pollard’s formidable Trinbago Knight Riders also at the Daren Sammy Stadium.

Du Plessis promised that his team “will reassess and see where we can get better tactically.” Their NRR is now negative and they have slipped from the top to third on the table.

In contrast, the defending champions, now with three big wins in the bag and a healthy 2.5-plus NRR, have moved to the top of the table.

With a week to rest before they take on the Barbados Royals in Barbados next weekend, the clear, confident message they seem to be sending to the other teams is that they intend to stay there.

Until the cows come home and until that tired, overworked, year-old ‘defending’ is removed and replaced by ‘repeat’.

Summarised scores

Toss: Guyana Amazon Warriors

St Lucia Kings: 100 all out (14.3 overs) Matthew Forde 31; Gudakesh Motie 3/16, Imran Tahir 3/29, Keemo Paul 2/19

Guyana Amazon Warriors: 101 for 4 (10 overs) Rahmanullah Gurbaz 47, Tim Robinson 33; Noor Ahmad 3/22

Man-of-the-Match: Gudakesh Motie

Result: Guyana Amazon Warriors win by 6 wickets

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Earl Best

Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.