In the red cor­ner stands the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR), a team that has nev­er lost in its four pre­vi­ous Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) fi­nals; while in the green cor­ner, stands the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (GAW) a fran­chise, which de­spite mak­ing it to five fi­nals, are yet to be crowned cham­pi­ons and pop that cham­pagne!

This is the mouth­wa­ter­ing sce­nario that has crick­et fans all across the re­gion, but es­pe­cial­ly here in T&T, sali­vat­ing for the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed heavy­weight fi­nale of this year's CPL which bowls off tonight at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um, Guyana, at 7 pm.

The ti­tle match marks the sec­ond oc­ca­sion the Knight Rid­ers will meet the Ama­zon War­riors in the CPL fi­nal, with the teams first en­counter com­ing back in 2018, when New Zealand's Col­in Munro, with an un­beat­en 68, led TKR to a com­fort­able eight-wick­et win as they scored 150 in 17.3 overs, re­ply­ing to the GAW’s 147/9 in a match played at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.

This time around, things are slight­ly dif­fer­ent as it’s the GAW fran­chise that will have the home field and there­fore the crowd ad­van­tage. GAW will be look­ing to ride the rich vein of form and suc­cess they have en­joyed this sea­son - which in­clud­ed con­vinc­ing wins over TKR in the two-round pre­lim­i­nary phas­es, with the first against their bit­ter archri­vals com­ing at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain and again at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um.

With an ob­vi­ous pun in­tend­ed, Guyana will be Hope(ful) that in form Bar­ba­di­an bats­man Shai Hope, one of the rev­e­la­tions of the en­tire tour­na­ment this sea­son, con­tin­ues his pro­lif­ic and con­sis­tent scor­ing.

De­spite his clas­sic bat­ting style and breath­tak­ing stroke-mak­ing, es­pe­cial­ly dri­ving through the off-side, Hope was pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered un­suit­able for high-lev­el T20 crick­et as his scor­ing rate was thought to be way be­low the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed stan­dards.

But the hours of hard work put in by the right-han­der to in­crease his scor­ing pace is ob­vi­ous­ly pay­ing off the West In­dies One Day cap­tain and he has em­phat­i­cal­ly an­swered his crit­ics on the way to be­com­ing this sea­son's lead­ing scor­er, amass­ing 449 runs at an av­er­age of 49.88. This tal­ly has al­so in­clud­ed his maid­en T20 hun­dred and four fifties, high­light­ed by one mem­o­rable over in which he plun­dered 32 runs off an over from the usu­al­ly stingy off-spin­ner Rakheem Corn­wall.

The Bar­ba­di­an has been well-sup­port­ed by an­oth­er im­port, young Pak­istani Saim Ayub who has been a huge rev­e­la­tion with a string of con­sis­tent scores for the five-time fi­nal­ists and is the sec­ond-lead­ing run scor­er in the CPL, in this, his de­but sea­son. The 21-year-old open­er scored three 50s in ac­cu­mu­lat­ing 426 ag­gre­gate runs.

An­oth­er Pak­istani, Azam Khan, has al­so en­joyed a break­out sea­son and will be a con­cern of TKR as his pow­er-hit­ting adds a de­struc­tive punch and quick scor­ing, de­spite be­ing very in­con­sis­tent and look­ing scratchy through­out the tour­na­ment, TKR will al­so be wary of Shim­ron Het­my­er, a proven T20 play­er who will want to keep his best for the bright­est lights.

The team is in high spir­its af­ter Fri­day’s em­phat­ic 81-run win over Ja­maica Tallawahs and is be­ing ably-led by vet­er­an South African spin­ner Im­ran Tahir, who seems to be re­al­ly en­joy­ing his first-ever stint of cap­tain­cy at this lev­el. One ma­jor cause of wor­ry for GAW will be the fit­ness of key all-rounder Keemo Paul, who missed the last match with an in­jury.

The dan­ger­ous Ro­mario Shep­herd, who along with Hope may be the find of the tour­na­ment from a WI per­spec­tive, has been ef­fec­tive with both the bat and the ball and should be paid de­served at­ten­tion to by TKR, as should fast-bowl­ing threat Dwain Pre­to­ri­ous (16 wick­ets) and spin­ners Gu­dakesh Motie (13 wick­ets) and skip­per Tahir.

De­spite al­ready los­ing twice to GAW, it is the TKR team who may en­ter the match with a psy­cho­log­i­cal edge of not on­ly be­ing vic­to­ri­ous in four of their last five match­es but al­so from the fact that one of these wins was a con­vinc­ing trounc­ing of tonight’s foes in the top of the ta­ble Qual­i­fi­er on Wednes­day, a win that se­cured di­rect en­try in­to tonight’s tro­phy game.

For­mer West In­dies white ball cap­tain Nicholas Pooran, fourth on the high scor­ers list with 290 runs, in­clud­ing his first-ever cen­tu­ry as a Knight Rid­er, has been at the core of the team’s per­for­mances, while an­oth­er for­mer WI cap­tain, the sea­soned and high­ly trav­elled Kieron Pol­lard, has been high­ly com­mend­ed on his han­dling of the team.

Pol­lard is cred­it­ed as hav­ing an as­tute crick­et­ing brain while he ex­pect­ed to play mind games with the Ama­zon War­riors on and off the field, his per­for­mance with the bat would al­so be wel­comed, al­though he had a few ball-beat­ing in­nings dur­ing the tour­na­ment, he has not been as con­sis­tent.

TKR will be hop­ing for a great open­ing stand and scor­ing in the pow­er play, which has been a con­cern, al­though the ex­per­i­ment of us­ing Chad­wick Wal­ton in the last match, paid div­i­dends. With a bat­ting line-up that has re­lied heav­i­ly on Pooran, the pow­er-hit­ting of su­per­man An­dre Rus­sell could be vi­tal down the or­der, with some runs hope­ful­ly com­ing from Kea­cy Car­ty, Akeal Ho­sein and Sunil Nar­ine, who are all ca­pa­ble with the bat.

Among the bowlers, the Knight Rid­ers will be re­ly­ing on Waqar Salamkheil and Rus­sell who both en­ter with 11 wick­ets, but it's fast bowler Ali Khan who has set the tongues wag­ging with some ex­press pace and his bowl­ing in the crit­i­cal death stage of the in­nings. Spin is al­so ex­pect­ed to be the key as Prov­i­dence’s pitch­es are known for turn and bounce and this sets the ta­ble for the crafty vet­er­an Nar­ine (10 wick­ets), Ho­sein and Samit Pa­tel to leave their mark on the fi­nal.