PROV­I­DENCE—The Guyana Ama­zon War­riors pre­dictably main­tained their un­beat­en streak, notch­ing their 11th win on the trot in a com­fort­able 30-run vic­to­ry over the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents on Sun­day to book their place in the fi­nal of the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League.

Led by an out­stand­ing un­beat­en cen­tu­ry from open­er Bran­don Knight, the War­riors post­ed a for­mi­da­ble 218 for three off their 20 overs at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Prov­i­dence.

De­spite an en­cour­ag­ing start, the Tri­dents fre­quent­ly lost wick­ets which helped to de­rail their chase and they even­tu­al­ly end­ed on 188 for eight in their al­lot­ted 20 overs.

The 24-year-old King lit up the af­ter­noon sky with a breath­tak­ing shot se­lec­tion dur­ing his knock of 132, the high­est in­di­vid­ual score in CPL his­to­ry.

First­ly, he shared an open­ing stand of 73 in nine overs with Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj which served as a launch­pad for the rest of the in­nings.

King showed his in­ten­tions ear­ly on, smash­ing 18 runs off Ja­son Hold­er’s sec­ond over af­ter a rel­a­tive­ly slow start for the War­riors.

It took a spec­tac­u­lar re­turn catch from Hay­den Walsh Jr run­ning back to break the part­ner­ship by dis­miss­ing Hem­raj for 27 from 23 balls.

Shim­ron Het­my­er’s stay at the crease didn’t last long as he was out once again to a short de­liv­ery, pulling Ja­son Hold­er in­to the hands of Ray­mon Reifer on the bound­ary af­ter scor­ing three runs.

For­mer Tri­dent Shoab Ma­lik then joined King at the crease and to­geth­er they com­plete­ly tore their op­po­nent’s bowl­ing apart.

The 16th over proved to be the turn­ing point of the in­nings with the duo un­leash­ing their fury on spin­ner Shak­ib Al Hasan.

Two Ma­lik six­es off the first two balls were fol­lowed by a four and two six­es by King, as they took 29 runs from the over.

Soon af­ter, King brought up his maid­en CPL cen­tu­ry by clout­ing Reifer over the mid­wick­et bound­ary for six.

Walsh Jr, the Tri­dents’ best bowler, wasn’t spared ei­ther as King smacked him for three six­es in the 19th over that went for 19 runs.

Har­ry Gur­ney, who had bowled well lead­ing up to his fi­nal over, was then belt­ed around the ground in the 20th over, as King clob­bered him for two six­es and a four in an ex­pen­sive over that went for 26 runs.

By the time the in­nings was over, King had count­ed a re­mark­able 11 six­es and 10 fours in his 72 ball knock, as the War­riors post­ed the high­est ever T20 to­tal at the ground.

Need­ing a Her­culean ef­fort to up­set the home side, John­son Charles and Alex Hales gave the Tri­dents an en­cour­ag­ing start. They had added 32 when Im­ran Tahir ac­count­ed for Charles’ wick­et, with two more wick­ets fol­low­ing soon af­ter.

Hales and Al Hasan lost their wick­ets with­in two runs of each oth­er as the Tri­dents slumped to 59 for three in the eighth over.

Jonathan Carter and skip­per Hold­er led a brief re­vival, adding 47 runs in three overs to give the Tri­dents a pos­si­ble chance of a come­back vic­to­ry. But once Carter was out for the top­score of 49 in the 17th over with 68 runs still need­ed, the vis­i­tors’ hopes dis­ap­peared.

War­riors’ best bowler was Ro­mario Shep­herd who took 3-50 from his four overs, while Im­ran Tahir and Odean Smith both cap­tured two wick­ets.

The Tri­dents will now face the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers in the semi­fi­nal on Thurs­day, with the win­ner ad­vanc­ing to face the un­beat­en War­riors. (CMC)