The second match in the Wednesday double header of action in the Caribbean Premier League sees the Saint Lucia Kings taking on the Guyana Amazon Warriors in what has suddenly become an important game in the CPL 2021 season.
The results on Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon have tightened the table right up in the race for the top four and with matches running out neither will want to lose this and open the door to the chasers.
Saint Lucia Kings
After winning just one of their first three matches, the Saint Lucia Kings have suddenly caught fire and now go into this one off the back of three straight victories and are beginning to look more like the side which make it all the way through to the final last season. Two of those three wins were over the host side St Kitts and Nevis Patriots, who until then had looked impregnable so the victories look bulletproof which will give them even more confidence.
You always look for things that are obvious when a team has such a turnaround to find out the root cause of it but you don’t have to look too hard with the Saint Lucia Kings. Their bowlers have come up trumps more recently. In the first three games they conceded 255, 152 and 158, all fairly high scores by the average of this tournament, but since then they have given up totals of 98, 124 and 118. Their batsmen have responded positively to the pressure being released on them and that has made the Kings a good all-round side.
Guyana Amazon Warriors
The Guyana Amazon Warriors are going into this match off the back of a heavy loss on Tuesday night, a defeat which has put them behind on their ledger. There is an outside chance that four wins could get a team through but the damage done to their run rate in that loss probably means it won’t be enough to get the Amazon Warriors into the knockout stages. That means that Guyana have to win two of their last three matches to give themselves the best chance of progressing.
The Amazon Warriors are slightly fortunate that their last two matches are against the Jamaica Tallawahs, the team with whom they might be battling with for that final play-off spot so if they can win here then they would have more control over the situation. They are going to need to find form with the bat for that to happen. We thought that they had found it in the win over the Barbados Royals in the first game between the two but then they reverted to type in the second one on Tuesday night.
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Key Men
Given that the Amazon Warriors are struggling with the bat, Kesrick Williams could be key for the Saint Lucia Kings here. He is hard to get away at the best of times let alone against a side struggling for runs so all his change ups could be very useful.
Guyana really need someone to step up with the bat and I wonder if that player needs to be the captain of the team Nicholas Pooran. Pooran keeps threatening to deliver but then randomly gets out at key moments. That needs to stop if the Amazon Warrior are to achieve their aims.
Betting
I don’t get how the Saint Lucia Kings are the outsiders in this match. They are much the more stable looking side now. They have a lot more batsmen in form than the Guyana Amazon Warriors and they also have a bowling attack that has adjusted to the conditions and are proving very hard to get away. There is a much better balance in the Saint Lucia Kings batting since they made one or two changes and we saw last year that they are the kind of team who when they get on a roll they are hard to stop.
We’ve seen the dew have a bit of an impact on this ground in the last few evenings but you would imagine with all their spin options it will be Guyana who are impacted more by that rather than assisted by it. Saint Lucia Kings don’t need to rely on their spinners in these conditions because a couple of their seamers can take all the pace off the ball. You get the impression that Saint Lucia could win a low scoring match and a high scoring one. I’m not sure Guyana can win the latter so it is the Kings for me.
Tips
Back Saint Lucia Kings to beat Guyana Amazon Warriors for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betway
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