GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana — Im­ran Tahir may be near­ing the half-cen­tu­ry mark, but the leg-spin­ner shows no signs of slow­ing down.

The Guyana Ama­zon War­riors cap­tain has con­firmed his de­sire to re­turn for the 2027 Caribbean Pre­mier League sea­son, where he will be 48 years old.

For Tahir, how­ev­er, the mo­ti­va­tion ex­tends be­yond sta­tis­tics; it is about fin­ish­ing his sto­ried ca­reer on his own terms, in the coun­try he now calls home.

“I’m very keen to come back and play be­cause I feel this is my home. I get a lot of love when I come here,” Tahir said at a press con­fer­ence in George­town fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of CPL 2026. “I’m look­ing to fin­ish my ca­reer in front of the Guyanese crowd.”

Tahir’s per­for­mances in the 2026 cam­paign proved that age is mere­ly a num­ber. The vet­er­an spin­ner fin­ished as the joint-high­est wick­et-tak­er of the tour­na­ment with 16 scalps, shar­ing the ho­n­our with Hu­nain Shah, Alzarri Joseph, and Matthew Forde.

His lead­er­ship guid­ed the Ama­zon War­riors to Qual­i­fi­er 2, where their cam­paign end­ed at the hands of even­tu­al run­ners-up and debu­tants, the Ja­maica Kings­men.

The 2026 sea­son was one of the mile­stones for Tahir. He be­came the first over­seas play­er to fea­ture in 100 CPL games and sur­passed Sunil Nar­ine to claim the top spot on the tour­na­ment’s all-time wick­et-tak­ing charts.

He now sits on 146 wick­ets from 102 match­es, all played for the Ama­zon War­riors since 2018.

Ear­li­er in the month, Tahir rolled back the years with a ca­reer-best five-wick­et haul against the St Lu­cia Kings, record­ing fig­ures of 5 for 17.

At 47, it made him the old­est play­er ever to take a five-for in T20 crick­et.

“I get mo­ti­vat­ed to come here and play my crick­et, try­ing to get fit, eat well,” Tahir said of his longevi­ty. “It is not easy be­cause if some­one is eat­ing ice cream and I’m in front of them, it’s very dif­fi­cult to con­trol your­self. But that’s what you have to do if you want to play for an­oth­er year and an­oth­er year.”

Be­yond the CPL, Tahir al­so led the fran­chise to their maid­en Glob­al Su­per League ti­tle ear­li­er this year, fur­ther ce­ment­ing his lega­cy with the War­riors since tak­ing over the cap­tain­cy in 2023.

Un­der his lead­er­ship, the team won the CPL ti­tle in 2023 and reached the fi­nals in 2024 and 2025.

De­spite his de­sire to re­turn, Tahir ac­knowl­edged that the fi­nal de­ci­sion rests with the fran­chise’s man­age­ment.

“There will be ques­tions about me, and I’m the kind of guy that likes chal­lenges and stuff,” he said. “For me, my part is to play my role not as a cap­tain, but as a play­er to­wards the team. I think I tried my best, so ob­vi­ous­ly I leave it with the man­age­ment. I leave it with the team own­er and the pres­i­dent; they have to de­cide where my fu­ture will be.”

CMC