THE Guyana Amazon Warriors, the real Warriors turned up Sunday evening for the first time in six games and that was the unit that Guyanese wanted to see. So the question is: where were they all this time?

One educated guess suggested that they may have been locked away in the freezers of a popular Georgetown ‘court’ but that remains just speculation.
However, there are some key points that have come out of Sunday’s win against the Tridents that are not to be overstated.

THE OLD SWITCHEROO
Not sure if Roger and Co. read my article a couple of days earlier but it seems someone in their camp did and relayed the information. Or maybe that’s me blowing my own trumpet.
Regardless, the message got over. Guptill wasn’t scratching and they needed to do something fast. Sending Sohail Tanvir up the order was a masterclass and kudos to the brainbox behind that as it surely caught Pollard and Company by surprise. Tanvir did a wonderful job atop the order, freeing his hands and clobbering anything even remotely wayward.

HURRICANE WALTON
You’ve got to admit that with the pressure of having to pick up after a misfiring Guptill gone, Chadwick Walton was freer as he let loose on the Barbados Tridents and it was like watching Picasso transform a blank canvas. He got a life off a blunder at deep mid-wicket and he made Barbados pay for it.
His shots were precise, his footwork confident and his attitude positive as he dispatched like a conductor directing a symphony. That’s the sort of positivity that the Warriors need to flow through the side if they are to have any chance of making the playoffs.
He and Guptill worked well in the middle stages, Guptill setting the stage by turning over the strike and Walton unleashing the willow. Make no mistake, this was – in the context of the situation – the best game plan, but somehow Guptill either lost focus or saw a way to end it early. This cost him dearly.
He departed and then Walton followed in almost carbon-copy manner immediately after. One overzealous pull to long on off a slower Kieron Pollard delivery ended a beautiful innings short of what should have been triple figures.

THE IN-EXPERIENCE
What followed, honestly, was embarrassing. Needing 14 from 15 deliveries, the Amazon Warriors batsmen seemed to feel it would be better to end the game quickly and the Tridents skipper Pollard seemed to be all too willing to let them go after him.
First it was Jason Mohammed, a standout player for GAW this season thus far but on this occasion, too feisty. One would have expected him to settle, take the situation in hand and bring the game home minus the drama. He didn’t, and only dispatched Pollard to long on for Tion Webster to take an absolute stunner.
Up came his replacement Keemo Paul; only to try the same and be dismissed. Were the Warriors trying to lose on purpose? It sure seemed so. However, what was clear was those batsmen got caught in the moment – Inexperience.

FUDADIN, THE UNSUNG HERO
His place has been questioned in the T20 squad but Assad Fudadin showed his worth on Sunday evening; and I hope the WICB Selectors were watching. He thinks before playing. He could have easily looked to deposit Pollard in the stands but he didn’t. He understood that wickets were falling around him and that the slogging approach of those before him was not the route to go.
Instead, he employed patience in the face of haste and got the ultimate reward. He told me yesterday, “What it called for was a bit of patience, I analysed the situation and understood that we could have won it comfortably with singles,” and win it he did.
He lasted out the danger-man Pollard while rotating the strike and then forced the skipper to bring the field in to stop the singles in the final over.