Ever since he ar­rived on the scene Nico­las Pooran was tout­ed as a game-chang­er and he proved just that last evening tak­ing an al­most dead and buried Guyana Ama­zon War­riors breath­ing life in­to them and their Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) cam­paigned when he stroked a bril­liant un­beat­en 100 which took them to glo­ry over the St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day.

SCORES: St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots 150/5 (20) ver­sus Guyana Ama­zon War­riors 153/3 (17.3) - War­riors won by 7 wick­ets. War­riors have now won three of their sev­en match­es.

Walk­ing in with his side limp­ing at 24/2 in the 6th over Pooran pro­ceed­ed to man­han­dle the Pa­tri­ots bowl­ing at­tack and throw them out of the knock­out stages of the tour­na­ment hand­ing them their 6th loss in sev­en match­es. Poised on 82 not out and with 15 runs need­ed to win, the Cou­va res­i­dent struck three suc­ces­sive six­es off New Zealand Ish Sod­hi to record his maid­en CPL cen­tu­ry.

The 24-year-old left-bat­ting tal­ent, found the per­fect al­ly in New Zealan­der Ross Tay­lor and they made bat­ting look easy on an im­proved pitch com­pared to the ones we have seen ear­li­er in the week at the Oval.

Pooran was dev­as­tat­ing and with­in turned the game in the 11th over bowled by Im­ran Khan in which he slammed him for two six­es in get­ting 18 runs.

Af­ter that, no one was spared as he climbed in­to poor de­liv­er­ies and struck them high in­to the va­cant stands at the Oval. Tay­lor with all the ex­pe­ri­ence in the world gave him the strike and the duo added an un­bro­ken 128 off 11.5 overs to win the match.

His un­beat­en 100 the first cen­tu­ry of this year's tour­na­ment came off just 45 balls and in­clud­ed 10 six­es and four fours. Tay­lor who had the best seat to view the in­nings was un­beat­en on 25 off 27 balls.

Ear­li­er, it was two oth­er lo­cal boys in the form of Joshua Da Sil­va and De­nesh Ramdin who starred when the Pa­tri­ots bat­ted as they scored 150/5 af­ter ini­tial­ly strug­gling.

Da Sil­va got his high­est ever T20 score in reach­ing 59 off 46 balls with two six­es and five fours. Ramdin al­so looked good in get­ting 37 not out off 30 balls. Da Sil­va con­struct­ed his in­nings nice­ly and af­ter he got the pace and bounce of the track, he tore in­to the Guyana bowl­ing.

Speak­ing af­ter his feat he said: "I want to thank my par­ents, my girl­friend and [team physio] Ja­son Pil­grim. He worked with me tremen­dous­ly hard in the last five months." Look­ing back at the knock he said: "I was just pa­tient to­day. It's a tough tour­na­ment and hope­ful­ly, to­day can trig­ger things for my team con­fi­dence-wise. We were just try­ing to build a part­ner­ship and keep the re­quired run-rate un­der 10. For the last two years, I haven't been fin­ish­ing games but I want­ed to do it to­day when it mat­tered the most for our team. When I saw Ish Sod­hi come back to bowl, I backed my­self [for the hun­dred]."

SCORES: St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots 150/5 (20) (Joshua Da Sil­va 59, De­nesh Ramdin 37no, Chris Green 2/31) vs Guyana Ama­zon War­riors 153/3 (17.3) (Nico­las Pooran 100no, Ross Tay­lor 25no, Jon Russ Jagges­sar 2/33) - War­riors won by 7 wk­ts.