VIN­ODE MAM­CHAN

vin­ode.mam­chan@guardian.co.tt

De­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers will face the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors this evening at 6 pm in their den, the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um look­ing for a win to ad­vance to the fi­nal of the tour­na­ment.

TKR fin­ished atop the six-team stand­ings with sev­en wins from 10 match­es, fol­lowed by Guyana Ama­zon War­riors which clocked six wins from their 10 match­es. The win­ner in this evening's clash will go straight to the fi­nal of the tour­na­ment, while the los­er will play the win­ner of the oth­er qual­i­fi­er which is be­tween Ja­maica Tallawahs and St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots which is card­ed for to­mor­row at the same Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um.

TKR lost the pre­cur­sor to this match on Sun­day night, as the War­riors stormed to a six-wick­et win in front of a packed house in Guyana. To­day the same fans are ex­pect­ed to show to sup­port as their team looks for a sec­ond straight win over the champs. Both teams will be hop­ing to seal their fi­nal spot but even if they don't there is a sec­ond chance.

On Sun­day, emerg­ing star Shim­ron Het­my­er and Sher­fane Ruther­ford blast­ed Guyana Ama­zon War­riors in­to sec­ond place with an as­ton­ish­ing as­sault on the TKR bowlers.

The War­riors’ bowlers had played their part to re­strict the Knight Rid­ers pow­er­ful bat­ting line-up to just 154/7, and that left Guyana with two dif­fer­ent tar­gets. As well as the usu­al 20-over tar­get for the win, there was a sec­ond equa­tion in play: vic­to­ry in­side 15.3 overs would be enough to leapfrog Ja­maica Tallawahs on net run-rate and take the sec­ond spot.

That, of course, brought with it a place in Play­off One and a di­rect route to the Fi­nal with a sec­ond chance in the Se­mi-fi­nal should they lose.

At 67/2 from nine overs on the back of Cameron Del­port’s 37 from 27, the War­riors looked well placed for the win but be­hind the rate re­quired to take the sec­ond spot.

Then Het­my­er went berserk. Six­teen runs in three balls from Kevon Coop­er in the 10th over pro­pelled the score to 86/2 at halfway. When Ja­son Mo­hammed fell to Niki­ta Miller look­ing for an­oth­er six, Sher­fane Ruther­ford came in and showed how it was done.

He smashed his first two balls over mid-wick­et for six but even bet­ter was to come as the next ball was re­verse-swept high in­to the stands for a third suc­ces­sive Hero Max­i­mum.

By now it was abun­dant­ly clear the War­riors were go­ing all out for sec­ond place. There was to be no let-up. Het­my­er con­tin­ued the on­slaught in the next over, pass­ing 50 in just 24 balls as he took An­der­son Phillip for an­oth­er pair of huge six­es.

Then it was back to Ruther­ford, with the sec­ond of three six­es he smashed off Dwayne Bra­vo in over 13 bring­ing up the 50 part­ner­ship in a mere 15 balls.

Al­though Het­my­er couldn’t quite see his team over the line, bowled by the im­pres­sive leg-spin­ner Fawad Ahmed, Chad­wick Wal­ton prompt­ly smashed his first ball for six to bring the scores lev­el and al­low Ruther­ford the lux­u­ry of need­ing just a sin­gle to fin­ish things rather than adding to his six six­es. He still hit four to end on a whirl­wind 45 not out from 13 balls.

The Knight Rid­ers were pegged back ear­ly with three key wick­ets falling in the Pow­er Play. Run ma­chine Col­in Munro suf­fered a rare fail­ure, bot­tom-edg­ing So­hail Tan­vir through to Luke Ronchi and de­part­ing for just 6 af­ter re­plays con­firmed the catch was clean.

Col­in In­gram’s in­tro­duc­tion to the side didn’t go to plan when he picked out deep mid-wick­et off Chris Green for just 4, while Bren­don Mc­Cul­lum was run out by a bril­liant di­rect hit from Del­port at point to re­duce the Knight Rid­ers to 23/3.

De­nesh Ramdin has been in fine form since mov­ing up the or­der and con­tin­ued that de­spite slip­ping one place to four to ac­com­mo­date In­gram. The Knight Rid­ers keep­er made 32 and shared a 54-run part­ner­ship with Dar­ren Bra­vo to steady the ship be­fore flick­ing Rayad Em­rit all the way to De­ven­dra Bishoo at deep square-leg.