‘Special, phenomenal, tremendous’ – Warriors describe CPL title win at home

There couldn’t have been a better place for the Guyana Amazon Warriors (GAW) to secure their first-ever Caribbean Premier League (CPL) title than right at home at the Guyana National Stadium at Providence, EBD.
From inception of the tournament in 2013, the team had played in 5 finals, but those games never took place at home. While in 2022, the country’s premier cricket facility hosted its first final, 2023 has been the year that history was on the Amazon Warriors’ side.

Buoyed by the cheers and encouragement from thousands of enthusiastic fans, the Guyana Amazon Warriors defeated the Trinbago Knight Riders by 9 wickets on Sunday last. As jubilation overtook those at the National Stadium, Guyanese players Shimron Hetmyer, Keemo Paul and Romario Shepherd reacted to the commanding Championship win.
“Words can’t even explain it, to be honest. It’s been there, the winning feeling hasn’t kicked in as yet. I’m still waiting for the tears to come, because it’s been year after year, I think, we’ve been working pretty hard on our team and what’s not. And then being able to finally cross the line this year, it was fantastic! Great effort from the boys! I think that’s what happens when you have basically all the awards in your team. I think that’s how you really tell it was a champion team,” an ecstatic Shimron Hetmyer shared.

Equally overjoyed, Keemo Paul shared, “To be honest, I really don’t know how to feel right now. It’s just emotional, ecstatic; it’s just a wonderful feeling man! Trust me.
“Well, you know, for the first time, it’s tremendous! For the guys, you know, they really worked hard over the past couple of weeks, and this is the reward for hard work. For people who say that we can’t cross the line, we did tonight. For all those who think, ‘What’s going to happen if we don’t cross the line?’, well I guess we will never know,” GAW Vice Captain Romario Shepherd said.
He added, “You know, it’s pleasing to see how much people out here support us. And next year again I’m sure we’ll give them a reason to continue supporting us.”
Quizzed about the significance of winning their first title on home soil, words like ‘special’, ‘phenomenal’, and ‘tremendous’ were only some of the expressions the Warriors used to describe the occurrence.

“To win any tournament is special, but this one, this one just takes the cake really, and having the final in Guyana as well, that makes it even more special. Having our home crowd, playing on our home ground, and everything. Just being a part of this franchise has been good to me, and I’m happy that I can be part of a team that gives us our first win,” Hetmyer noted.
On the same topic, Paul related that it was all about pleasing the fans. “It’s phenomenal, to be honest. In our pre-match meeting, we said we gotta do this for the people, for the fans. They’ve been tremendous, they’ve supported us right through, and we just wanted to do this for them and for our family, and that’s exactly what we did. So, we came out here tonight, and that’s exactly what we did,” he said.
“The first time in front of our home fans. The finals. You know, the way they support us really had the guys going, even though Coach wanted us to blank them out and play the game as hard as possible. And tonight we did that exactly, cause when we had the first couple wickets, you know, we said we’re going to crush them; we’re not going to lay back and give them singles and so. We keep pressing,” Shepherd added about the motivation of the home crowd.
In addition to the CPL Trophy, the Amazon Warriors captured the following accolades: the Player of the tournament (Shai Hope), highest run-scorer (Shai Hope), and highest wicket-taker (Dwaine Pretorius), alongside 5 players in the “team of the tournament”.