All in the past!: Hetmyer optimistic for better CPL season for Amazon Warriors

Every year, expectations are placed on the Guyana Amazon Warriors (GAW) team as they contest the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL), and 2022 is no different.

Especially because the finals of this tournament would be played in Guyana, there is even more pressure for the Warriors to perform. And adding to this mounting pressure is the fact that the GAW Men suffered an early exit in the recently concluded SKYEXCH 6ixty T10 tournament.
However, GAW Captain Shimron Hetmyer does not want to dwell on those things.
Addressing those circumstances and the importance of the team putting on a great performance this year, he has expressed hope of encouraging his teammates to do their best, rather than dwell on their past shortcomings.
“It’s always important! It’s been that way for quite some years, since the beginning of the CPL. It’s been important for us to win the tournament,” Hetmyer answered a probe about the importance of the Warriors winning the tournament this year.
“It’s very important, but it’s something we’re not trying to think too far ahead about, because this (team) that we’re playing with right now, it’s not the same team that we played with last year and the year before that, and so on,” he declared.
Then he continued, “It’s just for us to not think about what happened in the past, and for us to focus on what’s to come. And I’m trying as much as possible to let the guys be comfortable and be calm in how they go about their roles in this team, and to rally and to, most of all, enjoy what they do.
“Because, at the end of the day, if you can’t enjoy it, you wouldn’t really get the best out of each other,” Hetmyer concluded on the topic.
Speaking via virtual press conference on Tuesday morning, Hetymer readily admitted that the Warriors didn’t perform as expected in the recently concluded SKYEXCH 6ixty, but he shared a solution of his own.
“We didn’t play to the best of our abilities,” Hetmyer bluntly admitted regarding the T10 competition that concluded on Sunday last.
He went on to explain, “It was still a learning curve for us as a team, because I think most of the guys didn’t really have experience playing 10-overs before. So, I think, going ahead, it’s something we can put a little more emphasis on in terms of how we go about planning the innings and planning how to get to a specific score and stuff like that.”
Turning his attention to the CPL, which begins tomorrow, Hetmyer did not attach his name to a fixed batting role, but shared intentions to lead well.
“It’s to be decided, to be honest,” he said about his batting role in the GAW setup. “It’s mainly for the team, how the balance of the team is. I think in this team it would be much easier for me to bat a little higher, because of the fact that we have so much power down to the end, and being in a team like that, you wouldn’t really want to disrupt the power players down at the end.
“So, it’s really for me to try as much as possible to just stick around as the captain and as a batsman of the team; more so to really try and get as much as I can out of our team,” he related.
Still on the topic of the team, Hetmyer voiced the thoughts of many who have looked at the GAW complement of spin bowlers. The GAW captain figured that the Caribbean pitches may create an avenue for spin to dominate later in the tournament.
He opined, “I think it will be a big factor actually, especially going down to the end, because we know how the pitches are in the Caribbean: they’re quite slow, and they get slower and slower as the games go on and as we progress longer in the tournament. I think they will play a massive part in actually restricting teams for us, bowling teams out; and if we’re bowling second, for us to cross the line.”
Hetmyer will captain his first CPL match on Saturday, when the Warriors take on the Jamaica Tallawahs from 10am local time. However, the first ball in the 2022 CPL will be bowled tomorrow, in a match between the Tallawahs and the St. Kitts and Nevis Patriots. (Jemima Holmes)