Devon Thomas

Abhishek Singh ∙ 28 Aug 2021

CPL 2021 | Evin Lewis, Dominic Drakes shine in an easy win for Patriots over Warriors

Guyana Amazon Warriors did come in by beating defending champions and an overall 8-2 lead over St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in their last 10 encounters. However, on the D-Day, they were found to be lacking in all three departments which were well exploited by the Dwayne bravo leed team that knocked them over by eight wickets to register their second win on the trot and get to the top of the points table. Chasing an average total of 147, the Patriots got off to a brilliant start as Evin Lewis and Devon Thomas killed the game with their opening partnership itself. The duo added 113 for the first wicket in just 14 overs and it was clear that only one team was winning from there and it were the Patriots, the team playing in their home conditions with a little bit of crowd support in their favour. Eventually, Lewis did get out and another wicket fell down soon, but they were actions that couldn’t have had knee jerk reaction to the result of the game. Thus in the nineteenth over Fabian Allen, who came to the crease after the fall of Sherfane Rutherford’s wicket only 12 runs away from victory, gave Thomas the opportunity to finish the game by giving him the strike on the fourth delivery of the nineteenth over. Thomas was adjudged Man of the Match for his innings of 55 runs in which he made sure that he remained on the crease to guide his team home. Naveen Ul-Haq and Imran Tahir divided the wickets among them. Earlier in the day, after winning the toss, strangely enough, Warriors skipper Nicholas Pooran chose to bat first. His decision couldn’t be ratified by his batters as one after another they kept on faltering even as Chandrapaul Hemraj tried his best to hold one end. At 67-4 in the 10th over with Brandon Kings, Shoaib Malik and Shimron Hetmyer back in the hut, it looked increasingly difficult for the Warriors to get to a respectable total. Hemraj too couldn’t continue longer and was caught in the deep at a personal score of 39. Skipper Pooran then tried to accelerate the run rate and scoured 20 off a Fawad Ahmed over. But one shot too many meant he was caught at short fine leg brilliantly by Lewis off the bowling of Allen. In the ned, few lusty blows from Mohammad Hafeez got Warriors to 146 for the loss of eight wickets. Dominic Drakes was the pick of the bowlers for the Patriots as he got three crucial wickets of King, Malik and Imran Tahir at the death, making sure that Hafeez couldn’t play the first three balls of the 20th over. These two teams will be back on August 30 at the same venue and have a go at each other once again where the Warriors would look to avenge this loss while the Patriots would look to make it three in three for their 2021 CPL campaign.