PROV­I­DENCE – The stage is set for a clas­sic Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) fi­nale as long-time ri­vals, the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR), pre­pare to clash at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um in Guyana Sun­day night.

With a tro­phy on the line and a fer­vent home crowd ex­pect­ed, emo­tions are run­ning high, but both camps agree the ti­tle will be won by the team that best mas­ters the pres­sure.

In a fas­ci­nat­ing meet­ing of minds on the eve of the fi­nal, coach­es Lance Klusen­er of the Ama­zon War­riors and Ot­tis Gib­son from TKR iden­ti­fied emo­tion­al con­trol as the de­ci­sive fac­tor.

Gib­son, the as­sis­tant coach for TKR, em­pha­sised his team’s re­liance on a core of glob­al­ly dec­o­rat­ed vet­er­ans, Nicholas Pooran, Kieron Pol­lard, An­dre Rus­sell, and Sunil Nar­ine, to nav­i­gate the high-stakes en­vi­ron­ment.

“Emo­tions, that’s the beau­ty of sport, isn’t it? I guess the team that han­dles those emo­tions the best will most like­ly come out on top.

Guyana will have home ad­van­tage and a lot of crowd sup­port be­hind them. But we, as Trin­ba­go, will al­so car­ry a lot of trav­el­ling sup­port.”

He point­ed to his play­ers’ proven pedi­gree in crunch mo­ments. “We’ve got a lot of ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers that have won big fi­nals be­fore, IPL, World Cups, and we’ve been lean­ing on that ex­pe­ri­ence through­out the tour­na­ment. And we will be do­ing that tonight as well.”

His coun­ter­part, Lance Klusen­er of the Ama­zon War­riors, of­fered a suc­cinct agree­ment. For him, the chal­lenge is pure­ly crick­et­ing.

“It’s just about con­trol­ling those emo­tions and try­ing to make sure they don’t get in the way of mak­ing crick­et­ing de­ci­sions on the move,” Klusen­er said.

Adding a com­pelling lay­er to the nar­ra­tive is the quest of TKR’s Nicholas Pooran. Hail­ing from Trinidad & To­ba­go, the spir­i­tu­al home of T20 crick­et, Pooran has evolved in­to a glob­al six-hit­ting phe­nom­e­non.

Yet, de­spite 12 sea­sons, the CPL ti­tle has elud­ed him. Gib­son con­firmed that win­ning his home league has pro­vid­ed the star bats­man with “ex­tra mo­ti­va­tion.”

TKR them­selves are dri­ven by a five-year drought, their last cham­pi­onship com­ing un­der Pol­lard’s lead­er­ship dur­ing an un­beat­en cam­paign in 2020.

CMC