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CONGRATULATIONS to the TT squad of players for leading their team, the Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR), to victory in the final of the Caribbean Premier League 2025. The Guyana Amazon Warriors’ (GAW) plan backfired, ultimately leading to a three-wicket loss in a low-scoring game.
The pitches for this format of the game are usually prepared for the advantage of free-scoring batsmen as entertainment to attract large crowds that will view batsmen striking sixes and fours, scoring over two hundred runs or close to that, per innings. Not this time. The pitch for the final, scheduled for the Providence Stadium in Guyana on September 21, gave the home team the advantage as, having qualified, it would be a big boost playing in front of their supporters.
Hence, the first advantage sought was to limit the TKR batsmen. TKR batsmen were feared once they were settled. Especially batsmen like Kieron Pollard and Nicholas Pooran, two of the most powerful stroke makers and hitters, are respected worldwide for the demolition of bowling attacks. Also, backing them up is the robust slogging of Andre Russell, which would put fear in the heart of bowlers.
Although a strong batting team, they have sometimes failed when there’s some help for the bowlers, especially spin. The plan for the wicket at Providence was to prepare it to help the spinners by incorporating more moisture, which would help the ball to grip. That’s why the captain of the GAW, Imran Tahir, chose to bat first upon winning the toss in the belief that his spinners were more deadly than those of the TKR.
However, it made for an interesting match as the extra moisture would also assist the seamers. But batsmen made scoring runs laborious. In front of a sellout crowd of over 15,000 spectators, the Guyanese team collapsed for 130 runs. The captain, Tahir, probably had a target of 160 in mind, whereby he would have put the Knight Riders batsmen under pressure as their free-scoring stroke-play would be challenged, to say the least.
The fielding of the TKR team was exceptional and their bowling steady, though on that wicket, I thought they might have achieved more assistance.
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Nevertheless, it was enough to limit the batsmen of the Warriors. Quentin Sampson, opening the batting for the home side, was dismissed in the third ball of their innings with a perfect lifter from Russell just short of a good length over the middle stump, which he tried to defend, except it ballooned on him and he found difficulty in keeping it down. Pollard accepted the relatively easy catch at forward short leg, diving forward.
The idea of having a fieldsman in that position in a T20 game reveals the type of surface prepared for the game and credit must be given to the skipper, Pooran, for positioning the fieldsman there from the very beginning of the game. So it proved from the start of the match that one noticed the uneven bounce, also the wicket was two-paced and taking a high degree of turn from the spinners.
This made batsmen more cautious in their approach and the flavour of the game was lost as to combat these deficiencies of the pitch required careful planning and orthodox defence, which is really for the appreciation of the connoisseur and not for the bright sparkle of T20 cricket.
Ben McDermott fought well in the conditions and got to 28, then with some fortunate thrashing around at the latter part of the innings by Iftikhar Ahmed (30) and Dwaine Pretorius (25), helped the score to 130. Akeal Hosein’s wicket of Shai Hope, GAW’s best batsman, for 12 with a gem of a delivery that turned at almost a 45-degree angle, proved how problematic it could become to score runs here.
Nonetheless, the steadying influence of Alex Hales (26 in 34 balls) and a confident 23 in 15 by Colin Munro gave the innings some foundation. The promoted Narine, with 22 in 17 left the scoreboard dangling at 89 for 4. Pollard, the best batsman of the tournament, scored 21 in 12. One was hoping that he would have finished it off, but on this pitch, there were no certainties. It was left to Hosein to show the required confidence by striking a six and four to end this dramatic final. Although it lacked the entertainment that is usually associated with T20 games, as a cricket match, it was dramatic.
 
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