Captain Dwayne Bravo was a happy man Saturday as his St Kitts & Nevis Patriots defeated  the Guyana Amazon Warriors by eight wickets thanks to wickets from Dominic Drakes and runs from Evin Lewis and Devon Thomas.

“Very happy, a great team effort. Guyana is one of the better teams in the tournament, so I give credit to my bowling group to restrict a very experienced batting line-up,” said Bravo after his team’s comprehensive victory.

“That’s all we ask as a team, just have that hunger. It is a wicket that offers something for both spin and pace and if you bat properly and apply yourself you can make runs too, it’s a small ground. As long as you play the game smart, you’ll get the results. The way they batted in the first six, they literally batted Guyana out of the game.”

The Warriors innings stuttered at the beginning before some later order runs took them to a respectable total.

In their first match against the Trinbago Knight Riders the Warriors defended a similar total.

In this match a stunning opening stand of 113 between Lewis and Thomas took the Patriots to the easy in.

Losing captain Nicholas Pooran felt his side should have scored more.

“Definitely fell short with the bat, 15-20 runs. I think we got the toss wrong. I thought it would spin a little more in the back end,” he said.

 The Warriors won the toss and elected to bat, but they struggled to get their innings underway in the face of some tidy bowling from the Patriots. Drakes was the star but there were excellent spells inside the PowerPlay from Sheldon Cottrell and Paul van Meekeren.

It was Cottrell who got the first breakthrough when he had Brandon King caught by Sherfane Rutherford off a leading edge.

The Warriors once again pushed Odean Smith up the order as a pinch hitter but he didn’t have the same success as in game against the Knight Riders, falling for a seven-ball duck.

Wickets continued to fall throughout the Warriors innings, and they found themselves 75-5 in the 12th over with Drakes finishing with 3-26 and Fawad Ahmed claiming 2-33. Some lusty blows from Nicholas Pooran and a measured innings from Mohammad Hafeez got them to 146-8. 

Thomas and Lewis were in fine form, and they made the Guyana total look under par as they batted with controlled aggression to put the Patriots in complete control of the chase.

There were few alarms for the Patriots as Evin Lewis top scored with 62 from 39 balls, an innings that guided his team to victory with eight balls to spare.

Scores: St Kitts & Nevis Patriots 147-2 (Lewis 62, Thomas 55*; Drakes 3-26, Ahmed 2-33) beat Guyana Amazon Warriors 146-8 (Hemraj 39, Hafeez 38*; Imran Tahir 1-32, Naveen ul Haq 1-28) by eight wickets.