Jamaica Tallawahs have all but secured the final playoff spot of the CPL 2023, and will play against us again in the Eliminator in a couple of days. Due to an inferior net run rate, Barbados Royals now have no chance of qualifying for the playoffs, even if they manage to win their final game in hand.
The match was hosted at the Providence stadium and has proved to be a batting track for most games. Yet, despite winning the toss, our skipper Sikandar Raza chose to bowl first. We had a couple of changes in the lineup from the last game, with Raza describing it as - the coaching staff ensuring everyone gets a chance to play.
Alex Hales and Kirk McKenzie opened the innings for the Tallawahs and while McKenzie struggled to face the new ball, Hales took the game to our bowlers. He smashed as many as 8 boundaries inside 5 overs and got the Tallawahs off to a flyer. However, Alzarri Joseph put the brakes on their scoring with the wicket of struggling McKenzie in the 6th over. Hales who had started the innings exceptionally was slowed down with the loss of a further 2 wickets on the other end.
Roston Chase picked up two wickets in his two overs with the dismissals of Steven Taylor and Shamarh Brooks in the 10th and 12th over. With the score at 84 for 3, the game was in the balance for both teams. However, new batsman Imad Wasim and a well-settled Hales had other ideas. The floodgates opened from here on with Hales mostly dealing in sixes for his team. Wasim provided adequate support with his quickfire 41 from 24 balls, which had three 4’s and three 6’s in it.
Alex Hales reached his century in the 16th over and reached the milestone in just 47 balls. The England batter and Wasim continued to smash the ball at will and their 100-run partnership was completed in the 19th over. There was some relief for our bowlers at the end when Matthew Forde picked up the wicket of Wasim in the penultimate ball and a run-out in the final ball of the innings helped Jamaica Tallawahs finish with 201/5 on the board.
In return, our batting order just could not keep up with the quality of bowling on show by Imad Wasim and his men during the chase. Mohammad Amir picked up 2 early wickets of our opening pair Roshon Primus and Leonardo Julien. Bhanuka and Roston Chase tried to rebuild the innings for us, but Chris Green’s 2 wickets in 2 balls in the 6th over left us at 44/4 and from there our batting order collapsed.
Green continued to wreak havoc on a much-changed batting lineup of ours, and the wickets of Raza, Chase, and Colin Munro followed inside 10 overs. Our tail-end did show some fight towards the end, but by then it was just a matter of time before the Tallawahs recorded a win and progressed to the playoffs. We lost 3 wickets at the score of 79 and the game was wrapped up by Tallawahs captain Imad Wasim, helping them to an emphatic win of 122 runs.
With this result, we have lost both group-stage fixtures against the Tallawahs this season. However, we face them once again in a few days in the Eliminator and will be hungrier to make things right.
