Skip­per Shoaib Ma­lik and Bran­don Khan blast­ed half-cen­turies as the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors stamped their au­thor­i­ty in this year’s Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League with a crush­ing 81-run vic­to­ry over the Ja­maica Tallawahs at Sabi­na Park in Kingston on Wednes­day night.

Ma­lik scored an un­beat­en 67 while King hit 59 at the top of the or­der, as the War­riors notched 218-6, be­fore spin­ners Chris Green (1/30) and Im­ran Tahir (2/21) sti­fled the bats­men and ripped out the heart of the top or­der in an all-round ef­fort which showed just how well tuned the War­riors out­fit are this sea­son.

The vic­to­ry pushed the War­riors to sole lead­er­ship of the six-team ta­ble with a max­i­mum 10 points from five games, two more than sec­ond-placed Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers and four bet­ter than third-placed St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots. The Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, St Lu­cia Zouks and Tallawahs are in the bot­tom half of the ta­ble with two points each, but the Tallawahs have played six match­es and are now in re­al dan­ger of not mak­ing the play­offs.

Judg­ing from some of the body lan­guage dur­ing the em­bar­rass­ing spank­ing, some of the Tallawahs play­ers may have al­ready thrown in the tow­el on this tour­na­ment and it may very well be a case of re­build­ing for next sea­son in their re­main­ing four match­es.

Ear­li­er, the War­riors’ foun­da­tion was set by King. Af­ter los­ing open­ing part­ner Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj for a gold­en duck, caught by Javelle Glen off the bowl­ing of medi­um-pac­er Jade Dern­bach, with the score on just five, King took the match by the scruff of the neck.

He shared in two key part­ner­ships of 69 with Shim­ron Het­mey­er, who blazed a 25-ball 44 with six fours and two max­i­mums, and 43 with Ma­lik as the War­riors got to 117-3 in­side 13 overs.

King com­piled four fours and six six­es be­fore he went for one big shot too many off Ra­maal Lewis and holed out to Chad­wick Wal­ton at deep mid-wick­et.

Ma­lik was on just 12 off 11 balls at this junc­ture but then changed gears and in crit­i­cal stands of 53 with Nicholas Pooran (20) and 20 with Shane Ruther­ford (15), milked 101 runs off the last sev­en overs, start­ing with the 14th where he belt­ed pac­er Os­hane Thomas for two fours and two max­i­mums, while com­pil­ing his half-cen­tu­ry mile­stone.

Ma­lik’s in­nings in­clud­ed six fours and three six­es and more im­por­tant­ly, gave the War­riors a for­mi­da­ble tar­get to de­fend.

In their turn at the crease, Tallawahs nev­er looked com­fort­able against the ear­ly spin tac­tic used by skip­per Ma­lik, who em­ployed South African off-break spe­cial­ist Green and his leg-spin­ning com­pa­tri­ot Im­ran Tahir first up.

That proved a per­fect de­ci­sion as Gayle, af­ter despatch­ing Tahir’s first-ball loosen­er over the bound­ary, tried for a slog sweep right af­ter and on­ly spooned the ball in­to the air where Chan­dra­paul Hem­raj took a com­fort­able catch at short third man, send­ing Tahir run­ning off for his trade­mark open-armed air­plane cel­e­bra­tions.

The loss of their tal­is­man for sev­en runs in just the sec­ond over and with just 12 runs on the board si­lenced the Tallawahs fans. Chad­wick Wal­ton brought a few smiles by belt­ing Qais Ah­mad, brought on for his first over, for four fours in the next over. But he too suc­cumbed to Tahir a few balls lat­er, as he left his crease, end­ed up be­ing cramped for room and hit a full toss straight in­to Ah­mad’s lap at ex­tra cov­er. He was out for 15 runs as Tallawahs slumped to 34-2.

Javelle Glen (4) and George Work­er (0) did not last very long in sup­port of open­er Glenn Phillips as the home side slumped fur­ther to 51 for four. But when Work­er was out to Ah­mad, An­dre Rus­sell strode to the crease for his first match since be­ing hit on the hel­met by St Lu­cia Zouks’ Hardus Viljoen on Sep­tem­ber 13.

He quick­ly went to work, belt­ing the ball all over the park in amass­ing a quick­fire 40 off just 19 balls laced with three fours and three six­es.

But medi­um-pac­er Dwayne Smith got the big break­through in the 13th over as Ma­lik sought to stop the run leak­age. With his very first ball, Smith pro­duced a de­liv­ery lined on off-stump and Rus­sell tried to cut it over cov­er on­ly to find Ma­lik on the edge of the in­ner cir­cle as the Tallawahs now stut­tered to 111-5.

Any hope of a fight-back was dashed in the next over by all-rounder Keemo Paul, who struck a triple blow with the wick­ets of Phillips (40), Dwayne Smith (6) and Ra­maal Lewis (1), two be­hind the wick­et and one at point, as the Tallawahs’ were down for the count at 119-8.

SCORES:

GUYANA AMA­ZON WAR­RIORS 218-6 (20) (Shoaib Ma­lik 67*, Bran­don King 59, Shim­ron Het­my­er 44, An­dre Rus­sell 2/35, Jade Dern­bach 2/50) v JA­MAICA TALLAWAHS 137 all out (17.3) (Glenn Phillips 40, An­dre Rus­sell 40, Keemo Paul 3/34, Im­ran Tahir 2/21)

Re­sult: WAR­RIORS WON BY 81 RUNS

Man-of-the-Match: IM­RAN TAHIR (GAW)