Con­grat­u­la­tions to the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (GAW)—the 2023 Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) cham­pi­ons!

When I pre­viewed the CPL be­fore the sea­son start­ed, I must ad­mit that I did not have the GAW any­where in the pic­ture. My tip to win the ti­tle was an­oth­er team that has nev­er lift­ed the tro­phy, the St Lu­cia Kings (SLK). I had them in the fi­nal against the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR).

As I ex­plained then, be­sides hav­ing an ex­cel­lent all-round team, the man at the helm of the SLK, Faf du Plessis, is an in­spi­ra­tional leader and a good mo­ti­va­tor. He lifts the team’s spir­it when he scores runs at the top of the or­der, and play­ers play for him. I knew the ti­tle went with him when he was gone, but the SLK still did well to get in­to the play­offs.

Hav­ing ex­plained my ra­tio­nale for the SLK, the GAW had their own “Faf” in Im­ran Tahir. Who­ev­er con­sid­ered giv­ing this man the cap­tain­cy can on­ly be de­scribed as a stroke of ab­solute bril­liance. He has been with the fran­chise for years, and now, at the ripe young age of 44, he was hand­ed the cap­tain­cy.

Just as when he bowls, there is a pas­sion in his lead­er­ship. He en­cour­ages, mo­ti­vates, ad­vis­es, em­pathis­es, dis­cuss­es, and, per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, be­lieves in his play­ers. He is a true leader; he is what cap­tain­cy is all about, and not on­ly his per­for­mance with the ball but his gen­uine care and at­ten­tion to the needs of his team­mates all played a mas­sive part in them win­ning the ti­tle.

Ad­min­is­tra­tors be­lieve in giv­ing the best play­er the cap­tain­cy be­cause they are wor­ried they might get up­set and not give their best. Still, a good crick­et cap­tain is worth their weight in gold, es­pe­cial­ly if they can mo­ti­vate their play­ers and have them play­ing be­yond their abil­i­ty, which is pre­cise­ly what Tahir was able to do; his body lan­guage and his emo­tions rubbed off on his team. From the first game, this team looked like a team with a mis­sion. We have seen GAW teams win games hand­some­ly in the past, but there was a dif­fer­ence here. Every­thing in their game seemed to have a pur­pose.

Their plan­ning was good, and their ex­e­cu­tion was even bet­ter right from their first full game when they man­han­dled the in­ept St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots (SKNP) and then whipped the Ja­maica Tallawahs (JT). They jour­neyed to the (Queen’s Park) Oval and com­fort­ably beat the TKR but the ic­ing on the cake was when they had to de­fend six runs in the last over against the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als (BR). Tahir gave the ball to Gu­dakesh Motie, and they won by three runs and cel­e­brat­ed the vic­to­ry as if they had won the ti­tle. You knew then that there was some­thing spe­cial about skip­per Tahir and the GAW.

Crick­et fans in the re­gion, ex­cept in Guyana, ex­pect­ed them to choke again and not go all the way, es­pe­cial­ly when they lost to the SLK by sev­en wick­ets. But it was a great wake-up call for them, and even though they lost the play­off to TKR, they would re­group and come again. That they cer­tain­ly did, and they caught a com­pla­cent TKR team to­tal­ly un­aware in ar­guably the most one-sided fi­nal since 2016 when the GAW were bun­dled out for 93 and lost to the JT by nine wick­ets, a very sim­i­lar re­sult to the 2023 fi­nal.

I have main­tained that TKR has al­ways been able to get the right play­ers to play for the fran­chise, but this year, the GAW got it right with one play­er, in par­tic­u­lar, 21-year-old left-hand­ed Pak­istan open­er Saim Ayub. He scored 478 runs at an av­er­age of 43.45, a strike rate of 142.26 with four half-cen­turies, a mod­el of true con­sis­ten­cy. Al­so wor­thy of men­tion was Shai Hope, who scored 481 runs at an av­er­age of 53.44, a strike rate of 140.23 with one cen­tu­ry and four half-cen­turies. The odd time they failed, the bat­ting was still propped up one time or an­oth­er by the likes of Shim­ron Het­my­er, Azam Khan, and Keemo Paul when he was fit.

The cham­pi­ons lacked an­oth­er con­sis­tent open­er at the top to give them a good start but the lev­el-head­ed Hope soon made a mock­ery of them not get­ting good open­ing starts and to­geth­er with Ayub, took the game away from their op­po­nents. Are the West In­dies se­lec­tors not look­ing at crick­et? Hope has to play in all for­mats of the game, and I would give him the cap­tain­cy of the Test team, but per­haps they don’t have the bel­ly to bite the bul­let and do what is right for West In­dies crick­et. In ad­di­tion to Hope, there are some ex­cit­ing prospects around West In­dies crick­et, but where do they go af­ter CPL?

The bowl­ing of the GAW was al­so good. As the say­ing goes, bowlers win match­es, and they did pre­cise­ly this in the fi­nal. Dwaine Pre­to­rius sur­prised me. He bowled far bet­ter than I thought he would have. He bowled sen­si­bly and scalped 20 wick­ets, fol­lowed by the best bowler in the tour­na­ment, Tahir, with 18, and Motie, with 15 wick­ets, who im­pressed me from the first time I saw him at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el; he is im­prov­ing all the time. Ro­mario Shep­herd bowled well at times and got 12 wick­ets, but he still has to be a lot more con­sis­tent and can learn a thing or two in terms of his vari­a­tion from Pre­to­rius. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the GAW field­ing was ex­cep­tion­al; they looked fit and up to the task. Their back­room staff, led by Lance Klusen­er, de­serves all the cred­it.

So, what went wrong with TKR? I did say crick­et is a game of glo­ri­ous un­cer­tain­ties, and TKR proved just that. They bat­ted atro­cious­ly. It is prob­a­bly the worst bat­ting per­for­mance ever by a TKR team in the his­to­ry of the CPL. Out­side of Chad­wick Wal­ton, who was dis­missed with one that kept low, and Kea­cy Car­ty, every oth­er bats­man from 1-9 looked like they just felt they had to turn up, and the GAW would be in awe at their pres­ence. I have heard some of the most ridicu­lous the­o­ries on so­cial me­dia about why they lost. My dear read­ers, please re­frain from that. It was one of those nights when the TKR bats­men didn’t fire, and the GAW was pumped up. I al­so loved that many fans were hop­ing that (Sunil) Nar­ine and com­pa­ny could have pro­duced mag­ic on the night and dis­missed the GAW for less than 94 runs. In­deed, wish­ful think­ing, but Ayub and Hope had dif­fer­ent thoughts.

TKR still fin­ished sec­ond, and the fans should be proud. It sim­ply means they have some work to do, and come 2024, they have to plan bet­ter to take the ti­tle. I wish for the 2024 CPL to see more qual­i­ty over­seas play­ers in the re­spec­tive fran­chis­es, as that is lack­ing with­out call­ing names. Check through the teams and see how many are names that can turn a fran­chise in­to a win­ning unit. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, not many! Good­bye, CPL 2023. Thanks for the mem­o­ries!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.