It has been a long hard jour­ney, even pass­ing every day near the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, which is two min­utes from his home, know­ing that his team played four times there in a Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League fi­nal and came up short.

Guyana Ama­zon War­riors man­ag­er Omar Khan is one of the most pop­u­lar res­i­dents of Gas­par­il­lo, the com­mu­ni­ty where the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my is based. How­ev­er, he will lead his team to bat­tle in his back­yard against the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents on Sat­ur­day from 5 pm in the 2019 fi­nal of the tour­na­ment look­ing for that elu­sive crown.

The for­mer West In­dies man­ag­er has been with the War­riors since the in­cep­tion of the CPL and has tak­en them to the ti­tle-match on four pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions but was turned back at the fi­nal hur­dle each time.

Khan has a long and im­pres­sive his­to­ry as a man­ag­er and over­saw the most suc­cess­ful pe­ri­od in the his­to­ry of T&T's crick­et dur­ing the 2006 to 2009 pe­ri­od, where they won every­thing be­fore them on the com­pe­ti­tion stage.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day, Khan said: "We have a good team in terms of bal­ance and what makes the dif­fer­ence is that these guys are pro­fes­sion­als. We don't have the mas­sive names on pa­per but what we have are play­ers who know their ca­pa­bil­i­ties and can go out there and play with­in their means and strengths. For us, in man­age­ment, it is all about mak­ing the play­ers be­lieve in them­selves. They have come to­geth­er nice­ly un­der the lead­er­ship of Shoaib Ma­lik and they have re­spond­ed well. This is a big game for us and we need to re­mem­ber the things that have worked for us in the past and do it suc­cess­ful­ly."

Al­though the team played un­beat­en in the round-robin phase, the first time in the his­to­ry of the tour­na­ment a team has achieved this feat, Khan is well aware that the team's past ef­forts on the fi­nals stage will be hov­er­ing over their heads on Sat­ur­day. How­ev­er, he rub­bished the tag of 'chok­ers' some have giv­en the War­riors, say­ing, "It's not about us chok­ing. In the past, there would have been key mo­ments that we didn't cap­i­talise on the sit­u­a­tion that pre­sent­ed it­self and this cost us dear­ly. We have the core group still with us and they have re­alised where they went wrong and will be look­ing to put it right."

About play­ing for a ma­jor ti­tle in his home­town vil­lage, he said: "We are sure to get the sup­port of the home crowd as there are many Guyanese liv­ing here and they show up to sup­port crick­et. Of course, there have been many fans lo­cal­ly who have sent good wish­es and with the TKR out of the fi­nal, I am sure that they would give us that 12th man sup­port."

One thing is for sure, Khan will have his band of strong sup­port­ers led by Vi­jay 'The Bull' Mo­hip danc­ing from Gas­par­il­lo junc­tion in­to the sta­di­um, look­ing to hoist their hero on their shoul­ders.