The Guyana Ama­zon War­riors over­whelmed the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents by 12 runs on the Duck­worth/Lewis method to cruise in­to the Caribbean Pre­mier League play­offs at the Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos on Sun­day night.

Asked to get to 97, or 24 more runs off 20 balls, af­ter rain stopped play for over an hour as they were romp­ing to their ear­li­er reg­u­la­tion tar­get of 139, the War­riors got to 81-2 be­fore the rains came again, forc­ing the um­pires to aban­don the rest of the match.

Bran­don King had just com­plet­ed his sec­ond half-cen­tu­ry this tour­na­ment, a 34-ball knock laced with five fours and three six­es be­fore the match was end­ed by the bad weath­er all day brought on by Trop­i­cal Storm Karen.

The re­sult moved the un­beat­en War­riors to an unas­sail­able 12 points from six match­es, three more than the sec­ond-placed Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (9 pts) and four bet­ter than the St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots (8 pts). More im­por­tant­ly, the en­sured none of the oth­er teams, in­clud­ing the bot­tom-ranked Tri­dents (4 pts), St Lu­cia Zouks (3 pts) and the Ja­maica Tallawahs (2 pts), could de­ny the War­riors of a spot in the play­offs.

How­ev­er, the re­sult was nev­er in ques­tion af­ter the War­riors spin­ners, led by off-break spe­cial­ist Chris Green, rout­ed the home side to set up an easy to­tal to chase.

Green bagged a sea­son-best tal­ly of four wick­ets for 14 runs off 3.2 overs as War­riors skip­per Shoaib Ma­lik used pre­dom­i­nant­ly spin and ro­tat­ed his bowlers reg­u­lar­ly to keep the Tri­dents bats­men un­set­tled in their in­nings.

How­ev­er, it was the medi­um-pac­ers who got the ear­ly break­throughs for the vis­i­tors. Keemo Paul, af­ter giv­ing away 13 runs in four le­gal de­liv­er­ies and a no-ball in the first over of the match, fi­nal­ly got it right in his fifth ball and got the dan­ger­ous John­son Charles (11) to hole out to Im­ran Tahir at third man.

Ro­mario Shep­herd then got Justin Greaves, who marked his de­but in the pre­vi­ous match with a half-cen­tu­ry, to top-edge an at­tempt­ed pull shot to Shane Ruther­ford at ex­tra cov­er to be out for 11 as the home side slumped to 32-2.

Alex Hales and JP Du­miny then shared in a 31-run part­ner­ship to bring a slight re­prieve be­fore vet­er­an leg-break bowler Tahir came on and de­liv­ered a dou­ble strike in the sev­enth over. He re­moved Hales, whose slog sweep found Shim­ron Het­my­er on the deep mid-wick­et bound­ary off his first ball, then trapped Jonathan Carter plumb lbw for a duck as the Tri­dents tot­tered to 64-4.

Ma­lik did not let up ei­ther, bring­ing him­self on to re­move his op­po­site num­ber Ja­son Hold­er (2), af­ter he came down the wick­et and at­tempt­ed a loft­ed dri­ve he could not con­trol and of­fered an easy catch to Green at long-on as Tri­dents were in fur­ther trou­ble at 83-5.

And af­ter medi­um-pac­er Odean Smith re­moved Leniko Bouch­er for eight in the 13th over, it was all Green’s show. He re­turned in the 16th over and was im­me­di­ate­ly suc­cess­ful with the wick­et of Ash­ley Nurse. Out­foxed by the pre­vi­ous two de­liv­er­ies, Nurse went for a re­verse sweep the next ball and missed. How­ev­er, his back foot slid out the crease in the process, leav­ing wick­et-keep­er Nicholas Pooran with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­move his bails af­ter mak­ing a clean gath­er as the home side crashed to 115-7.

Green was not done though. In his next over, he got Tri­dents top-scor­er Du­miny to hole out to Shane Ruther­ford at deep square-leg for a 32-ball 38, be­fore get­ting a dou­ble strike in the fi­nal over with the wick­ets of Ray­mon Reifer (11), al­so caught by Ruther­ford at deep mid-wick­et, and Sandeep Lamich­hane caught and bowled for no score.

In their turn at the crease, open­ers King and Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj went af­ter the Tri­dents bowl­ing in the Pow­er Play overs. They raced to a 61-run part­ner­ship in sev­en overs be­fore Hem­raj was out­foxed by a Sandeep Lamich­hane goo­gly and was out caught and bowled for a well-played 20.

In to bat next, Het­my­er (2) did not last long as he went for a big slog-sweep off Du­miny and suc­ceed­ed on­ly in sky­ing the ball high in­to the air where Du­miny him­self took the catch.

Ma­lik then joined King and the vic­to­ry tar­get was well in their sights be­fore the rains came not once, with them well ahead of the DL par scare any­way, but twice. How­ev­er, the rains did not change the ex­pect­ed out­come.

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

BAR­BA­DOS TRI­DENTS 138 all out (19.2) (JP Du­miny 38, Alex Hales 24, Chris Green 4/14, Im­ran Tahir 2/22) v GUYANA AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS 81-2 (11) (Bran­don King 51, Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj 20, JP Du­miny 1/16, Sandeep Lamich­hane 1/22)

Re­sult: GUYANA AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS WON BY 12 RUNS DL METHOD

Man-of-the-match: Chris Green (GAW)