Twitter Reactions: Rashid Khan and Rayad Emrit hand Guyana their first win in bottom-table clash

The two teams who were in desperate need of a win in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) prior to Sunday’s (West Indies time) match were St Lucia Stars and Guyana Amazon Warriors. Darren Sammy led Stars have not won a single game out of the five they played before Sunday’s encounter, while Martin Guptill’s Amazon Warriors lost all the three games they played.

Hence, Sunday’s clash meant one team will finally open their account while the other team will simply add more to their misery and humiliation. Guptill’s Guyana turned out to be the former team as they inflicted heavy wounds in Stars’ already dismantled lineup, owing to brilliant efforts from pacer Rayad Emrit and Afghan sensation Rashid Khan.

Sammy won the toss at Gros Islet and decided to move away from the cardinal rule of T20 cricket- bat second if you win the toss. The opening combination failed again as Andre Fletcher departed after scoring just 13 runs. War veteran Marlon Samuels, who is the best person to revive Stars, departed after scoring just a couple of runs. Johnson Charles and Shane Watson tried to build up a partnership, with the former scoring 53 runs in just 32 balls. But after his dismissal, nobody could actually get the scoreboard moving for St Lucia. Sammy and Cornwall scored some runs, but at a very poor strike rate, as a result of which they could only manage to get 152 runs from 20 overs.

While Rayad Emrit was the main architect behind St Lucia’s crumble, the man who kept the things very tight was the spin sensation from Afghanistan, Rashid Khan. Khan gave away just 9 runs in 4 overs, which is nearly impossible in T20 cricket, that too by handing the in-form batter Charles and experienced Pakistani keeper Kamran Akmal the return ticket to the pavilion.

153 was not a target that any bowling lineup would ideally want to defend in T20, but Mayers and Taylor bowled well to keep the neutral’s interest alive in the game. At one stage, Warriors were struggling at 88-3, but Gajanand Singh and Jason Mohammed pulled the team out of danger. However, Stars were provided with another ray of hope when Jason was dismissed.

With 8 runs requiring from the last over, Sammy took the responsibility on himself to record their first win. Three good deliveries saw Guyana need 6 runs from 3 balls. But Roshon Primus came to the Warriors’ rescue and a boundary and a couple from him in 2 balls meant Guyana reach the target with one ball to spare. Twiterrati enjoyed every bit of another CPL thriller.

Here are some top tweets from the game