Zouks crush the Warriors to reach first CPL final

THE Cinderella Kids of this year’s Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) produced a major upset last night when they defeated last year’s finalist the Guyana Amazon Warriors in the second semi-finals match of the tournament at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba, San Fernando on Tuesday night.

SCORES: Guyana Amazon Warriors 55 all out (13.4) versus the St. Lucia Zouks 56/0 (4.3) – Zouks won by 10 wickets and will now play the Trinbago Knight Riders in the final on Thursday. The TKR has earlier on Tuesday taken care of the Jamaica Tallawahs.

Chasing just 56 runs for victory, the Zouks let loose the big hitter Rahkeem ‘Jimbo’ Cornwall and pocket dynamite Mark Deyal and they hammered the bowling to record the fastest completed chase in terms of balls to spare in an innings in the history of T20 franchise cricket.

The chasing effort also tied for the 7th quickest chase in all Men’s T20 cricket. The Mumbai Indians used up only 5.3 overs to defeat the KKR in the very first season of IPL in 2008. Zouks did it six balls quicker. The previous fastest chase in CPL history was a target of 129 hunted down in just seven overs in 2017 by the Patriots.

Cornwall finished with 32 not out off 17 balls with three sixes and two fours, while Deyal who had a brilliant all-round game scored 19 not out off 10 balls to add to his two wickets for two runs and a brilliant running catch to dismiss his cousin Nicolas Pooran. His effort landed the former TKR player the man of the match award.

Earlier, inspirational skipper Daren Sammy won the toss and said: “After watching the first match and seeing rain possibly coming later on, ee want to restrict the Amazon Warriors to a low total and adjust our batting approach to the target.

Well, this they did as Scott Kuggeliejn ripped out the heart of their top order with successive balls in the first over. He removed Brandon King and Shimroin Hetmyer shouldered arms and saw the lights. At that point, there was no turning back and by the fourth over the top four willow men in King, Hetmyer, Pooran, and Ross Taylor were back in the hut probably avoiding manager Omar Khan.

All the Zouks bowlers were on their top game and the Warriors just failed to record the lowest ever CPL score of 52, which was made by the Red Steel back in 2013.

A beaming Sammy speaking after the match said: “The way our boys have played, to the Zouks fans, they’ve been begging for something like that. I told the guys in the dressing room, this is not what we came here for. We didn’t come here to celebrate a semi-final. Nobody really gave us a chance. The guys we have, we have effective guys.

We don’t have guys in the top 5 or 10 in runs but we play as a team. It’s a massive effort to get to the finals with the players we have. We wanted to win the toss and bowl first and we got that right. If you notice the games being played here at 5:30 pm, all the games with the team batting in the first innings in the day have not scored 100.

I don’t know if it’s the dew falling on the wicket that makes it difficult batting first but I told Rawl Lewis I have a feeling we’ll restrict them under 100.

But I did not foresee 55. Credit must go to Scott (Kuggeliejn). That over getting two of the main batters outset the tone. And then (Muhammad) Nabi getting Pooran, to me he’s been the best batter of the tournament and for Deyal to take that catch, that’s the kind of performances you want in a do-or-die game.”(Extracted from Trinidad Guardian