Open­er Bran­don King blast­ed a bel­liger­ent half-cen­tu­ry as the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors once again stamped their class with an eight-wick­et win over the St Lu­cia Zouks in their lat­est Caribbean Pre­mier League out­ing on Wednes­day night.

The un­beat­en War­riors si­lenced the Daren Sam­my Sta­di­um home fans with an­oth­er ef­fi­cient ef­fort, as af­ter re­strict­ing the Zouks to 161-7 they cruised to their 162-run tar­get with 10 balls to spare.

King was the main ag­gres­sor in the vic­to­ry, stroking a blis­ter­ing un­beat­en 59-ball 81, which, though not flaw­less, served to warn the War­riors’ re­main­ing op­po­nents that they are no joke in this year’s se­ries.

The win helped the War­riors (14 pts) stretch their lead over the sec­ond-placed Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers to five points. The Zouks re­mained in fourth po­si­tion af­ter the loss with five points, still three be­hind third-placed St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots (8 pts) but now have two games left to the Pa­tri­ots’ one to get the points they now des­per­ate­ly need to se­cure a play­off spot.

TKR will try to keep pace on Thurs­day night when they meet the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents (4 pts), who are sec­ond to last on the six-ta­ble, at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos.

Ear­li­er, Zouks skip­per Daren Sam­my must have re­gret­ted his de­ci­sion to take first strike af­ter win­ning the toss, as the War­riors spin­ners stran­gled open­ers An­dre Fletch­er and Rakheem Corn­wall in the Pow­er Play overs.

The ever­green Im­ran Tahir got the break­through for War­riors in the fifth over, when he got Fletch­er to try to hit him out the ground on­ly to mist­ime the shot and sky the ball high in­to the night sky, where Ben Laugh­lin took the catch at long-off. The over was a wick­et-maid­en and the Zouks were strug­gling on 24-1 at the end of it.

Chris Green kept the pres­sure on in the next over but prob­a­bly could not be­lieve his luck when Corn­wall gift­ed the War­riors his wick­et. Af­ter Zouks' Col­in In­gram guid­ed Green to point, Corn­wall trot­ted down the pitch from the non-strik­er’s end for what was sup­posed to be an easy sin­gle. He was well in­side his crease when he got to the oth­er end but for­got to ground his bat and was run out by wick­et-keep­er Nicholas Pooran off a re­turn from Tahir, who was not even try­ing for a run out in the first place when he tossed in his throw.

Zouks were now 24 for two with their two open­ers, the men ex­pect­ed to push their quick scor­ing, back in the pavil­ion.

Col­in de Grand­homme joined In­gram and the pair achieved a re­vival of sorts with a 56-run part­ner­ship be­fore Tahir got In­gram to hole out to Green at long-off in the tenth over for 25, Zouks now 81-3.

De Grand­homme con­tin­ued the Zouks fight, tak­ing his bat to a well-played 37-ball 65, in­clud­ing three fours and five max­i­mums. His prob­lem, how­ev­er, was that he had lit­tle sup­port around him, with on­ly Christo­pher Barn­well pro­vid­ing any oth­er re­sis­tance to the vis­i­tors’ at­tack.

Ben Laugh­lin, in the side for the rest Keemo Paul, was the pick of the bowlers with three wick­ets for 12 runs while Tahir bagged two for 23.

In their turn at the crease, King and open­ing part­ner Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj showed they were in no-non­sense mode by blast­ing the Zouks bowlers to all parts of the ground in the Pow­er Play.

They had rat­tled up 52 runs in­side six overs when Hem­raj went for one big shot too many. He tried a slog sweep leg-spin­ner Fawad Ahmed’s goo­gly, top-edged it high in­to the air and was eas­i­ly caught by Fletch­er run­ning in from the long-on bound­ary. Hem­raj hit a 20-ball 33 with two fours and three six­es.

The War­riors soon slipped to 70-2 for two when Shim­ron Het­my­er (5) was ad­judged caught be­hind in the next over as he cut at a de­liv­ery off-spin­ner Jeav­or Roy­al, al­though re­plays sug­gest­ed he may not have touched the ball at all.

Un­daunt­ed by this, King, dropped on three by Sam­my, miss-stumped on 10 by wick­et-keep­er Jah­mar Hamil­ton and dropped on 23 by Barn­well, took full ad­van­tage of those Zouks gifts to go on to score his third straight half-cen­tu­ry of the tour­na­ment and take the War­riors to an­oth­er well-de­served vic­to­ry. His proud skip­per Shoib Ma­lik was with him at the close, al­so un­beat­en on 30.

SUM­MARISED SCORES

ST LU­CIA ZOUKS 161-7 (20) (Col­in de Grand­homme 65, Col­in In­gram 25, Christo­pher Barn­well 23, Ben Laugh­lin 3/12, Im­ran Tahir 2/23) v GUYANA AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS 162-2 (18.2) (Bran­don King 81*, Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj 33, Shoaib Ma­lik 30, Fawad Ahmed 1/24)

Re­sult: GUYANA AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS WON BY 8 WICK­ETS

Man-of-the-match: Bran­don King (GAW)