Given the challenging task of seeing out the rest of the innings, Romario Shepherd did so much more as the Guyana Amazon Warriors confirmed their place in the 2021 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) semi-finals with a second consecutive win over the Jamaica Tallawahs on Sunday (September 12).

Just like the previous encounter between the two sides on Saturday, the Amazon Warriors won the toss and elected to bat first, and although they found themselves in a perilous position at 75-7 – a blistering unbeaten knock of 72 by Shepherd not out ensured they set a target the Tallawahs never looked likely to chase.

“When I went out, Pooran told me to bat out the overs so I tried my best to be there until the 18th over,” said Man of the Match Shepherd afterwards.

“I’ve been working hard so here’s my result. We need to go to the end and try and win the finals. We’ve been in the final five times and haven’t won it yet. We want to try to get the first.”

In reply, the Tallawahs once again succumbed, their innings never getting going amidst a cluster of regular wickets. Only late hitting from Chris Green prevented them falling to a heavy defeat.

Guyana got their innings off to a slow start as Imad Wasim and Green made early inroads to leave the Amazon Warriors teetering on 36-3.

It was to go from bad to worse when the set Chandrapaul Hemraj holed out in the deep before Shamarh Brooks took a fantastic running catch to remove the dangerous Nicholas Pooran for 9.

Wasim then struck twice in his final over to leave the Amazon Warriors at risk of not making 100.

However, Shepherd’s power-hitting counterattack took the Amazon Warriors to a very healthy 142-7 to pile all the pressure back on the Tallawahs.

The Tallawahs reply got off to a disastrous start when they lost the clean-hitting Kennar Lewis and Kirk McKenzie to a double-wicket maiden over from Imran Tahir.

With the run rate rising Chadwick Walton offered brief respite with some boundary hitting before Hemraj got him to hole out to in the deep.

Wickets continued to fall as Smith and Shepherd got in on the act and at 42-6 the Tallawahs were left to rely on Carlos Brathwaite and Andre Russell to pull off an unlikely victory.

Some late heroics from Green gave them some hope but they ultimately fell to defeat and exited the tournament.

Scores: Guyana Amazon Warriors 142-7 (Shepherd 72*, Hemraj 21; Wasim 3-15, Green 2-19) beat Jamaica Tallawahs 128 (Green 31, Walton 20; Smith 3-20, Shepherd 3-31) by 14 runs.