All to play for as curtain comes down on CPL 2022

Barbados Royals and Jamaica Tallawahs will face off in the final of the 2022 Hero Caribbean Premier League tomorrow night at the Providence Stadium in Guyana with both captains anxious to get their hands on the victors’ silverware. Despite home side Guyana Amazon Warriors falling at the penultimate hurdle, the match-up is expected to be a well-patronized crowd spectacle.

Kyle Myers, who took over captaincy of the Royals after David Miller returned home to South Africa for national duty, hopes to come good with the bat to spur the Barbados Royals to their third title. For Tallawahs’ captain Rovman Powell, victory will erase much of the disappointment his team has endured in recent years.

Mayers, the 30-year-old all-rounder, is the leading scorer for his team with 337 runs which includes three half-centuries and a top score this season of 79. However, his bat has gone cold since the teams arrived in Guyana. In three matches played at Providence, Mayers has had scores of 16, 0, and 26. He hopes to do better with the bat when he faces up to the Tallawahs’ bowling attack.

“I look forward to big games like tomorrow’s. (I) am always one of those players who want to do well for the team, especially when it comes to championships time,” he said during a pre-match media conference today.

“I always believe I am one of those players who can win a game for my team so I am looking forward.”

Addressing his current form, Mayers said he intends to have a reversal of fortune once the game begins.

“Since I came to Guyana I haven’t been getting the scores I like but I look forward to tomorrow. It’s a different challenge, a different mindset. A trophy is on the line and I am happy to be able to contribute tomorrow if given the opportunity.”

The Royals’ captain said the team was happy to be able to get some rest following their victory in the first of the qualifiers against the Guyana Amazon Warriors on Monday.

“It’s been a long tournament, very jam-packed so the guys were very happy to win the qualifier and not play the extra game,” he said.

“We won the game and had some time to recover and focus on this game to come.”

Meanwhile, Powell said it would mean the world to him should he lead the Jamaica Tallawahs to the title.

The 29-year-old Powell is in his third season as captain but the previous two seasons did not go well for the soft-spoken Jamaican with the Tallawahs losing in the semi-finals in 2020 and failing to advance to the playoffs in 2021.

During the 2022 season, the Tallawahs began well winning their first three games before ending with a record of four wins, five losses and a no-result but managed to make it into the playoffs where they defeated the St Lucia Kings on Tuesday and then the dangerous Guyana Amazon Warriors by 37 runs in an exciting high-scoring encounter on Wednesday night to advance to the finals.

Winning it would be really special, Powell said.

“It would mean the world to me. The past two seasons that I have captained the team, it hasn’t gone well for the franchise, so now for us to be in the final, for me to captain the team to the final and maybe, a CPL championship would go well for me personally and go well for the franchise,” Powell said at today’s media conference.

“The Tallawahs hasn’t tasted victory for a few years,” he said of the franchise that last won the title in 2016. “We have sat down and said we are a better franchise than that so hopefully, given the opportunity tomorrow we will do our best to change that.”

Powell said the team is upbeat but taking it relatively easy on the eve of the final in preparation for the big game on Friday.

“The guys are feeling really upbeat. Barbados is a very strong team, possibly the best team in the CPL so far, so the guys are upbeat about facing the challenge,” Powell said.

“The guys are looking forward to the championships. Today is a day when we just take it easy in a sense.

“We just came back down off the high of the game last night, put in a little bit of preparation, get in a little bit of rest and hopefully things go well tomorrow.”

Tallawahs’ bowling attack has been their major strength with left-armers, pacer Mohammad Amir and spinner Imad Wasim, taking 16 wickets each. The Tallawahs will sweat overnight on Amir, though, after he sustained a groin injury on Wednesday night.

Royals have lost only two games during his year’s CPL and will be considered favourites, but that rating will mean nothing to both teams when they take the field tomorrow.

BARBADOS ROYALS (likely): 1 Kyle Mayers (capt), 2 Rahkeem Cornwall, 3 Harry Tector, 4 Azam Khan, 5 Corbin Bosch, 6 Devon Thomas (wk), 7 Jason Holder, 8 Mujeeb Ur Rahman, 9 Obed McCoy, 10 Hayden Walsh Jr, 11 Ramon Simmonds

JAMAICA TALLAWAHS (likely): 1 Brandon King, 2 Kennar Lewis (wk), 3 Shamarh Brooks, 4 Rovman Powell (capt), 5 Imad Wasim, 6 Fabian Allen, 7 Raymon Reifer, 8 Mohammad Nabi, 9 Chris Green, 10 Nicholson Gordon, 11 Mohammad Amir/Migael Pretorius

(SportsMax/WG)