GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana – Guyana Ama­zon War­riors roughed up Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) to storm in­to the play­offs of the Caribbean Pre­mier League here late Sat­ur­day night while con­demn­ing the mul­ti­ple-time cham­pi­ons to their first-ever bot­tom-place fin­ish.

Asked to bat first at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, Ama­zon War­riors ral­lied to 173 for six off their 20 overs with Afghan open­er Rah­man­ul­lah Gur­baz lash­ing his sec­ond straight half-cen­tu­ry with 60 off 42 de­liv­er­ies.

In re­ply, TKR’s bat­ting woes con­tin­ued as they slumped to 136 all out from their al­lot­ted overs, find­ing them­selves crip­pled by Ama­zon War­riors’ spin trio of left-arm spin­ner Shak­ib-al-Hasan (3-20) and off-break bowler Ju­nior Sin­clair (2-26) and leg-break bowler Im­ran Tahir (2-31).

Samit Pa­tel struck 34 and Col­in Munro, 30, but no oth­er bats­man passed 20, to leave TKR with their sixth de­feat in ten games and on­ly sev­en points to show for their cam­paign.

They joined reign­ing cham­pi­ons St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots in miss­ing out on the play­off spots.

“The way we have played through­out the en­tire tour­na­ment, we de­serve to be in the po­si­tion we are right now,” said cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard, who made 13 to end the cam­paign with 132 runs from nine in­nings at an av­er­age of 14.

“To play ten games and as a bat­ting unit first of all, not cross 160, I think that’s dis­ap­point­ing to say in it­self.

“And then from a bowl­ing per­spec­tive, hav­ing teams on the back foot and giv­ing it away in the back end, we de­serve to be where we are in the ta­ble.”

For Ama­zon War­riors, the vic­to­ry was their third on the bounce lift­ing them in­to sec­ond on nine points, af­ter they faced elim­i­na­tion at the start of their home phase.

“I would like to say fan­tas­ti­cal­ly well done to the boys. They re­al­ly played hard for the three games that we’ve won so far, and I don’t have enough words to ex­press how great they were,” said skip­per Shim­ron Het­my­er.

“Af­ter hav­ing a bad time on the road, just to come home and lift their game and lift their spir­it and en­joy each and every mo­ment of it, I’m just re­al­ly, re­al­ly proud of them.”

Ama­zon War­riors lost Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj for four with six on the board in the sec­ond over but 20-year-old Rah­man­ul­lah gal­vanised the in­nings first in a 50-run, sec­ond-wick­et stand with Shai Hope (14) and then in a 60-run, sec­ond-wick­et part­ner­ship with Shak­ib who made 35 from 25 balls with four fours and a six.

Af­ter lash­ing half-dozen six­es, Rah­man­ul­lah per­ished in the 15th over in a slide that three wick­ets fall for 16 runs in the space of 18 de­liv­er­ies be­fore Het­my­er (23) and Odean Smith, who struck three six­es in a sev­en-ball un­beat­en 22, pro­vid­ed pre­cious mo­men­tum to­wards the end in a 41-run, sixth wick­et stand.

TKR start­ed their run chase nice­ly, Munro post­ing 32 for the first wick­et with fel­low New Zealan­der Tim Seifert (13) be­fore putting on a fur­ther 36 for the sec­ond wick­et with Samit who belt­ed three fours and one six off 27 balls.

But things fell apart quick­ly. Munro skied Tahir to cov­er in the 10th over, Nicholas Pooran (1) was run out in the next over by Shak­ib’s di­rect hit from mid-wick­et and Samit top-edged a pull be­hind at the start of the 14th over, be­fore the last six wick­ets tum­bled for 36 runs.