Guyana Ama­zon War­riors made it two from two in their home leg of the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) with a thrilling run chase to de­feat the Saint Lu­cia Kings by six wick­ets at Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um in George­town, Guyana on Thurs­day night.

The Kings won the toss and opt­ed to bat first, and their cap­tain Faf Du Plessis showed why with a mag­nif­i­cent cen­tu­ry to lead the way. His 103 came off 59 balls to help his side set the high­est team to­tal in the Hero CPL this year. An out­stand­ing 194/5 looked like an un­chaseable tar­get but the Ama­zon War­riors had oth­er ideas.

Rah­munul­lah Gur­baz and Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj got the Ama­zon War­riors' re­ply off to a fan­tas­tic start reach­ing 71 runs at the end of the Pow­er­play and that en­abled the War­riors to al­ways be in the hunt for vic­to­ry. De­spite a flur­ry of wick­ets af­ter the Pow­er­play, Shai Hope and Shim­ron Het­my­er paced the chase su­perbly and the War­riors were able to get home with four balls to spare.

Ear­li­er the Kings had shown what a good wick­et it was, tee­ing off from ball one to reach 100 runs in 10 overs. Du Plessis was fault­less in his stroke play tar­get­ing all cor­ners of the ground and brought up his cen­tu­ry in the 17th over of the match.

Late runs from Ros­ton Chase helped the Kings set the War­riors 195 to win but if the chase seemed in­sur­mount­able the War­riors made light of it in front of a fever-pitch Prov­i­dence crowd.

Gur­baz set the tone in the Pow­er­play blast­ing 52 off 26 balls and this laid the plat­form for Hope and Het­my­er to pace the re­main­der of the chase ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. When Het­my­er fell for 36, Hope sim­ply took up the man­tle lead­ing the War­riors home with a su­perb half-cen­tu­ry.

His 59 runs came off 30 balls as he made it back-to-back fifties in the Hero CPL and con­sec­u­tive wins for the Ama­zon War­riors.

(CPL)

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

KINGS 194 for five off 20 overs (Faf du Plessis 103, Niroshan Dick­wella 36; Shak­ib-al-Hasan 2-33) vs AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS 195 for four off 19.2 overs (Shai Hope 59 not out, Rah­man­ul­lah Gur­baz 52, Shim­ron Het­my­er 36, Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj 29; Mark Deyal 2-32).

Guyana Ama­zon War­riors won by six wick­ets.