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(CPL) Guyana Amazon Warriors defeated Antigua and Barbuda Falcons with the last ball thanks to a brilliant knock by Dwayne Pretorius. In a match that saw scores go up and down, the South African all-rounder sealed the victory with the last ball.
This was the second night in a row that the match was won by the last ball, and the Falcons lost both times. Facing the powerful delivery of Gurdakesh Moti, the Falcons recovered from a poor batting performance to post a competitive total of 168/6.
The Warriors also struggled to maintain batting consistency throughout the match and when the target was 47 runs off 18 balls, the match looked like it would go in the direction of a Falcons win, but a calm batting performance from Pretorius and the Warriors tailback saw them win by three runs.
After winning the jump ball, the Amazon Warriors elected to pitch first and when Teddy Bishop was struck out on a great catch by Shai Hope, they got an early breakthrough, leading by a score of 10/1 at the end of the second inning.
After a relatively slow opening two innings and the loss of an opener, the team needed to rebuild and that is exactly what they achieved thanks to 73 runs between Fahr Zaman and Kofi James, which raised the ratio to nearly 10 runs per innings.
James’ wicket was the start of the Falcons’ rout as they lost four wickets and scored just 29 runs. Moti was the main wrecker as he beat Sam Billings with a clever delivery that saw the England batsman beaten as he pushed forward. He also had Jewel Andrew caught by Shimron Hetmyer at deep midwicket as the 17-year-old batsman tried to hit sixes.
From there, Imad Wasim played brilliantly, hitting a brilliant counter-attack after being lost at mid-off to get the Falcons back into the game. The Pakistan all-rounder scored 40 runs off 21 balls to propel the Falcons to the total they were aiming to defend.
Amazon Warriors chose to play Moti, who hit a six in the first over, but was out for just six runs off four balls. Gurbaz also entered the powerplay but was caught by center fielder Shamar Springer.
With the fielding restrictions relaxed, the Falcons’ spin bowlers did a good job of suppressing the Warriors as the score started to rise. Shimron Hetmyer tried to steady the ship and set up a platform for the Warriors but he was bowled by Imad. When Azam Khan hit the wicket with his bat after a fierce flick from Springer, the Warriors’ score fell to 77/4.
Shai Hope remained in the middle and last year’s player of the tournament looked dangerous in the final innings but he was bowled for 41 runs and it looked like the Warriors had won as the required scoring rate was more than 15 runs per innings.
That was before the Warriors began their title defence in the most dramatic fashion, with Pretorius scoring 18 runs off the last six balls.
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