Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj and Nicholas Pooran lit up the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um with some blis­ter­ing stroke play as the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors whipped the vis­it­ing Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents by 47 runs in their Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League matchup in Prov­i­dence on Sun­day night.

Hem­raj hit a 55-ball 63 but it was Man-of-the-match Pooran’s 15-ball 61 which had the War­riors fans al­most ra­bid with de­light as their team joined the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers atop the six-team ta­ble with the em­phat­ic win.

Pooran’s blitz took the War­riors to 180 for four be­fore Ro­mario Shep­herd bagged four wick­ets for 13 runs as the vis­i­tors were over­whelmed for 133.

TKR, who won the ear­li­er match against the St Lu­cia Zouks by sev­en wick­ets, and War­riors both fin­ished the day with six points from their open­ing three match­es but the Guyana out­fit has a bet­ter net run rate.

The Tri­dents’ hor­rid day be­gan off the very first ball when Hem­raj bowled Eng­lish­man Alex Hales with his first de­liv­ery. Hales, per­haps ex­pect­ing spin from the wick­et, played back in­stead of for­ward and saw his stumps knocked over with no runs on the board.

There was a steady flow off Tri­dents bats­men to and from the pavil­ion with­in the first 10 overs but the fi­nal nail in the cof­fin came when last recog­nised bats­man JP Du­miny was bowled off an in­side edge from the very first ball he faced from medi­um-pac­er Keemo Paul to leave the vis­i­tors dev­as­tat­ed at 75 for six.

Du­miny’s wick­et came 12 balls af­ter Tri­dents skip­per Ja­son Hold­er was run out go­ing for a sec­ond run off a shot to the cov­er bound­ary by Du­miny. All-rounder Keemo Paul, run­ning around on the bound­ary in his sweep­ing po­si­tion, got his re­turn in quick­ly and spin­ner Chris Green did well to col­lect it at the bowler’s end and run out a late-ar­riv­ing Hold­er for just four runs as Tri­dents were re­duced to 53-5.

There­after, on­ly Ash­ley Nurse, with 25-ball 40, of­fered any re­al re­sis­tance. He was even­tu­al­ly bril­liant­ly caught down the leg side by Pooran af­ter he feath­ered a ris­ing one from Shep­herd off his hip. Ray­mon Reifer was then bowled around his legs by Shep­herd for a duck as Tri­dents slipped to 119 for eight.

Shep­herd put the fi­nal ic­ing on the cake in the 17th over by bowl­ing Sandeep Lamich­hane to fin­ish with ca­reer-best T20 fig­ures.

Ear­li­er, Hem­raj got the War­riors off to a bril­liant start with some ag­gres­sive bat­ting in the Pow­er Play. Af­ter los­ing open­ing part­ner Bran­don King with just eight runs on the board, Hem­raj took over ini­tial­ly. He shared in four 20-plus run part­ner­ships as he stroked six fours and three six­es to all parts of the ground.

But when he was out in the 16th over, bril­liant­ly caught by Nurse run­ning back at back­ward point, with the score on 102 for four, it was the Pooran show.

Pooran and Shane Ruther­ford took 72 runs off the last four overs as they slammed 78 runs off the Tri­dents bowlers al­to­geth­er. Pooran even­tu­al­ly hit three fours and fives six­es in his tal­ly while Ruther­ford blast­ed four six­es.

SUM­MARISED SCORES:

GUYANA AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS 180-4 (Chan­der­paul Hem­raj 63, Nicholas Pooran 61 no, Shane Ruther­ford 32 no, Roshon Primus 2/35) v BAR­BA­DOS TRI­DENTS 133 all out (Ash­ley Nurse 40, JP Du­miny 20, Ro­mario Shep­herd 4/13, Shadab Khan 2/39)

Re­sult: GUYANA AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS WON BY 47 RUNS

Man-of-the-match: Nicholas Pooran