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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

And that’s a 2019 CPL wrap - My Star Team

by

Colin Murray
2105 days ago
20191016

A fort­night ago in my col­umn, “Ex­cit­ing and un­pre­dictable CPL”, I warned every­one about the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents (BT) and the type of in­con­sis­tent sea­son they were hav­ing. By get­ting in­to the play­offs, we should see the best of them as they can spring a ma­jor sur­prise and sim­ply can­not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

They not on­ly sprung a ma­jor sur­prise but de­feat­ed both the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) and the pre­vi­ous­ly in­fal­li­ble Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (GAW) to waltz away with this year's Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) ti­tle in style.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Ja­son Hold­er and his team. I sup­pose Hold­er had some­thing to prove as he had lost the West In­dies 50-over cap­tain­cy and want­ed to prove that he is still a good leader and has what it takes to win a ti­tle.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, dur­ing the World Cup, I thought his cap­tain­cy was poor; his de­ci­sion-mak­ing al­lowed the op­po­si­tion to take the ini­tia­tive when the West In­dies were on top and so they quick­ly turned pos­i­tive po­si­tions in­to neg­a­tive ones. When things were not go­ing well, he al­lowed the game to flow with­out try­ing to change things and sim­ply failed to show up when his team need­ed him the most.

But he was more pos­i­tive lead­ing the BT. His bowl­ing changes were spot on and he had the right field­s­men in cru­cial po­si­tions, in­clud­ing him­self at long-on or long-off, where he took 13 re­mark­able catch­es with his 6' 7" frame pluck­ing the ball out of the air. A short­er in­di­vid­ual would not have made the height to catch some of those balls but he nat­u­ral­ly had help, both on and off the field.

Phil Sim­mons, who must be con­grat­u­lat­ed for his role in the turn around of Hold­er and his gen­er­al han­dling of the BT, must be elat­ed. He brought this team from the brink of elim­i­na­tion to cham­pi­ons. In the end, they got the se­lec­tion of the team cor­rect and Ash­ley Nurse seemed to have risen from the dead in Tarou­ba for the play­off and the fi­nal.

I thought Ray­mon Reifer was used tac­ti­cal­ly well and proved to be more than use­ful with both bat and ball. The young man in Hay­den Walsh Jr was full of con­fi­dence and I look for­ward to him im­prov­ing as he plays more crick­et and to­geth­er with the miser­ly Har­ry Gur­ney, the BT played two ex­cel­lent match­es and de­served to win both. They held their nerve far more than the TKR and the GAW.

TKR was dis­ap­point­ing. They were frankly not as strong as they were back in 2017 and 2018. In the bowl­ing de­part­ment, they nev­er found some­one to re­place Fawad Ahmed. This, cou­pled with Sunil Nar­ine’s in­jury, left young Khary Pierre with far too much to do and al­though he picked up 10 wick­ets, there was no one bowler to get 18 or 20 wick­ets. Ali Khan was a shad­ow of him­self and on­ly bowled a few good spells.

In the bat­ting de­part­ment, though Lendl Sim­mons was su­perb at the top, they missed a Bren­don Mc­Cul­lum com­ing in at No 4. For all the flak he takes, Dwayne Bra­vo was sore­ly missed for his bat­ting and bowl­ing. Kieron Pol­lard led the team well but many times had no one to turn to at the death to keep the runs down; and how DJ Bra­vo bat­ting at No 7 would have giv­en re­al im­pe­tus to the bat­ting at the end. The one mis­take I thought the TKR made was in Seekkuge Prasan­na who should have been utilised more with the ball in the tour­na­ment, es­pe­cial­ly at Prov­i­dence and Tarou­ba but TKR will come back stronger next year.

The GAW fal­tered again when it count­ed. It ap­peared to me that they felt they just had to turn up, with the BT pre­sent­ing them­selves as nui­sance val­ue as they had al­ready beat­en them three times in the com­pe­ti­tion and were over­con­fi­dent ex­pect­ing to win again. They failed to re­alise that they were fac­ing a more de­ter­mined and well-pre­pared team that had done their home­work and had played at the same ground just two days pri­or.

The GAW pan­icked at cru­cial times both with bat and ball and they nev­er looked as flu­ent and as well-oiled as they did dur­ing their fan­tas­tic win­ning streak. The bat­tery of young, tal­ent­ed bats­men guid­ed by the ex­pe­ri­enced Shoaib Ma­lik did not know how to steer the ship un­der the bridge with­out the cap­tain and so the tar­get of 171 al­ways seemed un­reach­able. I am cer­tain they will re­group and chal­lenge again next sea­son but one has to won­der, will they ever win a CPL ti­tle?

Hav­ing seen the games and look­ing at the play­ers who played and made a se­ri­ous im­pact on their team, the fol­low­ing is Mur­ray’s Su­per Star CPL Team: Lendl Sim­mons (Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers), Bran­don King (Guyana Ama­zon War­riors), John­son Charles (Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents), Glenn Phillips (wk) (Ja­maica Tallawahs), Shoaib Ma­lik (capt) (Guyana Ama­zon War­riors), Kieron Pol­lard (Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers), Ray­mon Reifer (Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents), Chris Green (Guyana Ama­zon War­riors), Hay­den Walsh Jr. (Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents), Im­ran Tahir (Guyana Ama­zon War­riors), Har­ry Gur­ney (Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents), Ja­son Hold­er (12th) (Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents), Keemo Paul (13th) (Guyana Ama­zon War­riors), Phil Sim­mons - Coach - (Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents).

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Phil Sim­mons on his re­turn to the West In­dies coach­ing set-up. He is by far the best coach in the re­gion so let us hope he will get the sup­port he re­quires from Crick­et West In­dies. I am cer­tain we will start to see some light at the end of the tun­nel and al­though the tun­nel may feel long, pa­tience is a virtue. We have a new white-ball cap­tain and a new coach so at least things are hap­pen­ing, or so they seem. Good luck, Sim­mo!


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