Cap­tain Nicholas Pooran hailed Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers’ (TKR) vic­to­ry over Guyana Ama­zon War­riors in the fi­nal of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), which helped his team cap­ture its fifth ti­tle, as a mem­o­rable one.

The for­mer West In­dies cap­tain was speak­ing on the team’s re­turn home at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, on Mon­day (Spetem­ber 22), fol­low­ing TKR’s three-wick­et win over the Ama­zon War­riors at Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um, Guyana, on Sun­day night.

“My first in­ter­na­tion­al T20 was in Prov­i­dence against Guyana and to win the ti­tle there was re­al­ly spe­cial to me,” said the 29-year-old, who ded­i­cat­ed the ti­tle to the na­tion as a Re­pub­lic Day gift.

“This week was re­al­ly spe­cial for Trinidad (and To­ba­go) with Re­pub­lic Day be­ing a cou­ple of days away and with Jereem (Richards) and Keshorn (Wal­cott) get­ting medals in the World Cham­pi­onships and TKR com­ing to win the CPL is an amaz­ing week for us. The wel­come back home is spe­cial for us. I feel that win­ning the CPL is for the en­tire T&T.”

The Ama­zon War­riors, who won the toss and elect­ed to bat, were re­strict­ed to 130 for the loss of eight wick­ets in the al­lot­ted 20 overs. Pak­istan’s Iftikhar Ahmed was the top­scor­er with 30, fol­lowed by open­er Aus­tralian Ben Mc­Der­mott (28). In­di­an-born Saurabh Ne­travalkar led the bowl­ing at­tack for TKR with 3-25, with T&T’s Akeal Ho­sein get­ting 2-26.

In re­ply, TKR got to the win­ning tar­get of 137/7 in the 18th over. Ho­sein hit the win­ning run, a bound­ary to get the vis­i­tors their first ti­tle in five years. He con­tributed a valu­able 16 runs. Eng­land’s Alex Hales topped the bat­ting with 26, with the Ki­wi Col­in Munro (23) and lo­cal crick­et­ing leg­ends Sunil Nar­ine (22) and Kieron Pol­lard (21) sup­port­ing well to en­sure the mem­o­rable vic­to­ry.

Ho­sein was named the “Play­er of the Match” for his all-round ex­ploits. Pol­lard col­lect­ed the “Play­er of the Tour­na­ment” award.

Pooran said he was con­fi­dent of his team de­spite the crit­i­cisms faced.

He said, “For me, age is just a num­ber. When we picked this squad, a lot of guys count­ed us out, say­ing our time is done, and we are old, and give the oth­er guys an op­por­tu­ni­ty but these guys proved why they are leg­ends of the game. Ex­pe­ri­ence is some­thing you can’t not buy.”

The wick­et-keep­er/left-hand bats­man sup­port­ed his team­mate’s Pol­lard com­ments, call­ing for more sup­port of the TKR.

“Our re­gion is re­al­ly small, and we com­pete against the rest of the world and yet still, when some­one is great and do­ing re­al­ly well, we find a way to bring them down. That is dis­ap­point­ing. We could tol­er­ate it as play­ers but from a fan’s per­spec­tive, we still rep­re­sent the West In­dies at some point in our ca­reer, and the same peo­ple would sup­port us. So while play­ing for Trinidad (and To­ba­go), Guyana or some oth­er is­land, they booed us, him es­pe­cial­ly.”

Pooran al­so hailed the uni­fy­ing pow­er of crick­et, say­ing, “I just think that sports bring every­one to­geth­er, CPL brings every­one to­geth­er, and we see that, the love es­pe­cial­ly here in Trinidad (and To­ba­go). In Guyana, all the fans come out, and in­stead, we’re us­ing that for ha­tred and try­ing to bring some­one down. At the end of the day, we are hu­man be­ings; we can come to­geth­er.”