At last…Amazon Warriors win
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a high five at the end of the over as a mark of respect for the testing spell.
After claiming Samuels in the Powerplay, Rayad Emrit returned late to help contain the Stars. Emrit caught a slice of luck when Shane Watson spliced a full toss to Martin Guptill in the circle at cover. Bowling the final over, he conceded sixes to Sammy off the first two balls - part of a 19-run sequence for the Stars captain in four balls.
But Emrit bounced back strongly, conceding just three runs off the last four balls while taking two wickets. Sammy misfired a drive to long-on before Rahkeem Cornwall’s attempt to pull Emrit against the wind found Rashid at deep midwicket. The Stars’ power failure across those final four balls proved vital. Emrit ended with 4 for 35. Amazon Warriors rode middle gear through much of the chase behind three solid partnerships forged by Walton, Martin Guptill, Babar Azam and Mohammed to carry them to 88 for 3 in the 13th over. But Gajanand’s arrival marked a shift into high gear for the visitors as he cracked an unbeaten 35 off 22 balls, including a 57run fourth-wicket stand with Mohammed.
Even though Amazon Warriors had wickets in hand, Stars began to edge marginally in front with five overs to go as the required run rate crept towards 10 per over. Mohammed and Gajanand decided to make their move in the 16th over. They went after Shane Shillingford, carting him for 17, including a streaky edge to third man and an authoritative pull by Gajanand over long-on for six. Gajanand flicked Kyle Mayers for six over fine leg in the next over, before slapping two fours off Jerome Taylor in the 18th to bring the equation down to 11 off 12 balls. His knock might have erased the bad memory of losing his cool against Carlos Brathwaite in Florida last Sunday.
After Mohammed fell at the end of the 19th over, Sammy took the ball with eight required for victory. Roshon Primus was on strike. Two singles and then a dot-ball against a yorker gave the Stars hope, but Primus tucked into a length ball from Sammy on the fourth delivery to split the two boundary fielders on the leg side for four. Sammy speared one into Primus’ legs next ball, but the allrounder tucked it easily to deep square leg’s left to come back for the second to clinch victory. After William’s heroics, all the attention switched to the stacked men’s 800m which was won by Ugandan, Julius Mutenkanga ahead of Samuel Lynch and Trinidad’s Ashton Gill. The race of the weekend which started like a 100m sprint was filled with theatrics as the runners jostled for the lead in the first 200m. Gill slowed down proceedings