Well…the Warriors are the new CPL Champs – just as your (modest) Eyewitness predicted yesterday!! Now he wasn’t just playing the numbers and playing the law of averages – even though there was that! CPL was launched in 2013 and in the first decade the Warriors was the winningest team in the entire league. Unfortunately – even though reaching the final five times in that decade – they just couldn’t get over the finishing line. That’s certainly defying the law of averages!!
Well, they’ve won the first championship game of THIS decade and your Eyewitness predicts they’ll again defy the odds – this time positively – and win at least five championships this decade!! What was most satisfying about this win was it was against the Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR)!! While they’d beaten the Warriors only once in the five finals in which the Warriors appeared, they’ve turned out to be the team Guyanese have come to detest in the past decade!! And the disdain – maybe that’s too strong a word?? – has spread into all sorts of areas: even linguistically. Imagine they insist on saying “curry chicken” rather than our correct way– “Chicken curry”! Jeez… if you want to start off with “curry”, you’d have to say “curried chicken” – since curry is now an adjective!!
Anyhow, your Eyewitness was also quite chuffed at the Warriors’ comprehensive trouncing of the TKR. Winning the toss, they sent them in to bat and restricted them to 94 runs – the second lowest score in the finals since 2013!! The Warriors went in and demonstrated this was a new team with a new attitude: rather than the low target going to their heads and coming out with bats crashing, they methodically set out to dismantle their arch enemies!! They beat the score with 99 in just 14 overs and one wicket!! How sweet it was!!
Dwaine Pretorius took four wickets in his four-over spell for just 26 runs and our own Motie came through with two wickets in his four-over stint – for a measly seven runs!! That’s what made that score so low!! How sweet it was to see those wickets tumbling! Even our enfant terrible Hetmyer came through with a spectacular diving catch to end TKR’s embarrassment on the field!! In our innings, Saim Ayub made a solid yet exciting 52 with 2 fours and 4 sixes while Man of the Series Shai Hope chipped in with 32! Pretorious was Man of the Match.
The significance of the game for Guyanese was captured in Pres Ali and VP Jagdeo not only being at the game, but taking time out from their extraordinarily busy schedules to be involved ever since the semis arrived!!
The One Guyana was reflected in the faces in the stands!!
…devious is Venezuela
While we were getting ready to savour the Warriors’ inexorable march towards the CPL 2023 championship, Maduro and the Venezuelans continued their onslaught against us. But again our Guyanese politicians weren’t distracted and came together in a united front against the enemy on our western front after Pres Ali briefed Opposition Leader Norton on the status of the border controversy.
Just as Burnham and Jagan had buried the hatchet back in the 1970s against Venezuelan sabre rattling, so have Ali and Norton this time. None of that nonsense about not shaking hands and such like!! But in addition to objecting to the Government accepting bids on additional oil blocks, Maduro suddenly announced they were gonna hold a referendum for Venezuelans to state their position on the controversy!! Now after more than 60 years of propagandizing from nursery to university – by ALL Venezuelan govts – that they “wuz robbed” of Essequibo, this is just another ploy to bully us!!
We gonna isolate them diplomatically in the world!
…to celebrate Warriors’ victory
Your Eyewitness believes that at this time, Pres Ali should strike while the iron’s hot to meld the unity forged by the Warriors’ victory against those dastardly Trinis. He should declare a holiday for schoolchildren!!
