Jamaica Tallawahs are CPL20 2013 Champs

Congratulations to the Jamaica Tallawahs who defeated Guyana Amazon Warriors by 7 wickets with 15 balls to bowl to win the first Limacol Caribbean Premier League (CPL20) Championship.

Gayle batted throughout the innings to ensure a victory by Jamaica Tallawahs, albeit a bit subdued as he was for all but one of the 9 matches he played in this tournament. After losing the two matches against Guyana in the preliminary rounds, the Tallawahs came out firing with their bowling attack.  Dave Bernard, Jr and Philander were brilliant to open the bowling, with Bernard Jr picking up the first 2 wickets, and Philander bowling a most-conservative 3 overs.

Struggling throughout most of the innings.  After 10 overs, they were searching for runs, any runs, at 46-2, a meager run rate of 4.6.  That continued until the the 14th over by Russell, where they reached 5 runs per over and stayed over that permanently until the last over bowled by Chris Gayle.  They swung at everything, taking 20 from the over, and bringing up a somewhat-decent but difficult-to-defend 128 runs at the loss of 5 wickets.

Gayle was not the “big bash” Gayle we are used to seeing in limited over matches, particularly T20 matches like this, but he carried his bat to victory.  He lost a few partners for low scores but put together a 62-run partnership with Andre Russell, the hero from the semis yesterday.

Scores in the match

Guyana – 128-5 from their 20 overs;

• Lendl Simmons 40,
• Denesh Ramdin 29,
• Bernard Jr, –  2 wickets for 18 from 4 overs
• Muralitheran – no wickets for 13 runs from 4 overs
• Philander – no wickets for 8 runs from 3 overs

Jamaica – 129-3 from 17.3 overs;

• Gayle and Russell both unbeaten on 47 and 33 respectively,
• Narine 0 wickets for 9 runs from 4 overs
• Santokie – 0 wickets from 31, giving up 20 runs (5 wides) in last over.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Jamaica Tallawahs, the champions, and to Guyana Amazon Warriors, the runner ups.  Congratulations also goes out to the coaches, the players, and fans. They were great.  But, a big congratulations to Ajmal Khan (Verus International founder), the founder / organizer of the CPL, various sponsors, and celebrity investors / endorsers like Gerard Butler (Tallawahs) and Mark Wahlberg (Tridents).  Last but not least, we have to give it up to Krishmar Santokie who, not surprisingly, was selected as the player of the tournament.  He was great in his bowling, except for the final over of this final match. We do hope to see big things from the young man in the West Indian T-20 side (hint: selectors).