Hero CPL play-off... Warriors seeking place in 3rd consecutive final

Hero CPL play-off… Warriors seeking place in 3rd consecutive final

Jul 25, 2015 Sports

By Sean Devers in Trinidad
In association with Bounty Supermarket,
Carib Beer, Leisure Inn, Noble House
Seafoods & Payless Varity Store

Tonight at the Queens Park Oval here in Port-of-Spain the Guyana Amazon Warriors will be seeking to spoil the fete for what is anticipated to be a capacity crowd of over 20,000 by beating home Franchise T&T Red Steel in the Hero CLP second semi-final scheduled to commence at 16:30hrs, to advance to their third consecutive final.
The game is expected to be an enthralling thriller since, backed by their adoring home fans, the Red Steel are on a high following fantastic career best performances by the Bravo brothers, Daren and Dwayne in their semi-final win against the Jamaica Tallawahs on Thursday night.
The Warriors will also be a confident bunch since they got past the Red Steel in their last game at Providence to deny the boys in Red a direct route to tomorrow night’s final which will see defending champions Barbados Tridents facing the winner of the tonight’s show down.
The pitch which looked two-paced should offer assistance to the spinners and the toss could be important since half of the contest will be played in natural light and the other half under floodlights.
This will be the ninth time there two teams will face each other in the game’s shortest format with the Warriors winning four times and losing on a similar number of occasions while in the 2015 competition they have also shared the spoils 1-1.

Dwayne Bravo (CPL)

A less than capacity crowd was present for the Red Steel’s match on Thursday but tonight should see a ram packed venue since a large population of Guyanese reside in the twin Island Republic and many more plan to take the 55-minute trip from Guyana for the weekend and the atmosphere here should be Carnival-like.
The Warriors have still not managed to score freely in the ‘power-play’ overs, while Assad Fudadin, Lendl Simmons, Brad Hodge (the team’s leading scorer) and Skipper Denesh Ramdin have been the only batsmen to score with any level of consistency.
Chris Barnwell seems to be no longer a bowler and playing purely as a batsman and if that’s the case then he is batting too low in the order and forced to come out and play shots from ball one.
His erratic shot selection has not helped his cause in this tournament. Umar Akmal and David Weise have not fired with the bat.
Guyana’s bowling is their strength, especially spinners Sunil Narine (his team’s leading wicket-taker with 13 scalps), Veerasammy Permaul and Devendra Bishoo. Weise had a five-wicket haul against the Tridents, while Merchant DeLange bowled

Marchant de Lange and co will hope to put
on a good display for the Warriors. (CPL)

with some pace in his four-wicket haul against the Red Steel on the low and slow Guyana track.
The Red Steel will depend on the elegant Darren Bravo, Jacques Kallis, Cameron Delport, Kamran Akmal, Dwayne Bravo, Johan Botha, Jason Mohamed and Kevin Cooper to put runs on the board.
The bowling will be led by the experienced Kallis, leg-spinner Samuel Badree, Sulieman Benn, Mohamed, Cooper, Botha and Bravo who has the most wickets in the tournament (26) 10 more than Krishmar Santokie’s 16.