Five for 17 at 47: Imran Tahir Turns the Kings Inside Out, Quentin Sampson Clears the Ropes, and the Warriors Seal Top Spot

Some teams take a heavy defeat into the next match with them. The Guyana Amazon Warriors had been bowled out for 117 by the Antigua and Barbuda Falcons the night before, their unbeaten run ended by 65 runs, and they had to turn around and play again at the same ground. The Saint Lucia Kings won the toss, chose to bat, and were 54 for 1 in the seventh over with Kamil Pooran finding the boundary freely.

Then Imran Tahir, who is 47 and captains this side, took the ball and took five wickets for 17 runs. With Mehidy Hasan Miraz bowling four overs for 13 at the other end, the Kings lost eight wickets for 27 and were all out for 119. The chase that followed was nervier than it had any right to be — 69 for 4, 51 needed from 34 balls — until Quentin Sampson hit five sixes in eleven deliveries and settled it. Guyana won by four wickets with nine balls left, moved to 14 points, and can no longer be caught at the top of the table.

The Kings' innings began as if it would be the Falcons' night all over again. Dwaine Pretorius had Tim Seifert leg-before for 4, but Kamil Pooran hit six fours and two sixes on his way to 43 from 35 and the Kings reached 51 for 1 at the end of the powerplay. Guyana, without Mohammad Nabi or Rahmanullah Gurbaz in their XI for this one, needed someone else to find the middle-overs grip.

Two spinners found it together. Mehidy Hasan Miraz had John Campbell caught by Sampson for 12, Charith Asalanka caught behind by Hope and Kemol Savory leg-before. Tahir trapped Pooran and Roston Chase in front and bowled McKenny Clarke and Matthew Forde. Between 54 for 1 and the end of the twelfth over, the Kings lost seven wickets for 19 runs and were 73 for 8. Tahir completed his five by trapping Joshua Bishop at 81 for 9.

Between them, Tahir and Mehidy bowled eight overs for 30 runs and took eight wickets. Seven of the Kings' ten batters were bowled or leg-before, and all five of Tahir's victims fell that way. Five wickets, and not one of them needed a fielder.

A target of 120 should not require a rescue, and for a long time Guyana batted as if they were determined to prove otherwise. They made 23 for 1 in the powerplay after Chase had Mavendra Dindyal caught for 5, and 40 for 1 at the halfway mark. Glenn Phillips and Shai Hope added 53 for the second wicket, and it took them nearly ten overs to do it — sensible in theory on a surface where the Kings' spinners were giving nothing away, and alarming in practice once the wickets came.

They came in a cluster. Maheesh Theekshana bowled Phillips for 37 from 40, Charith Asalanka had Hope caught behind for 21 from 31, and Chase had Mehidy caught for 1. Sixty-six for one had become 69 for 4 in the space of a few balls, and Guyana needed 51 from 34 with the memory of the previous night still fresh.

Quentin Sampson walked out into that. When the fifth wicket fell at 98 — Hetmyer caught by Pooran off Chase for 14 — it was 22 needed from 17 balls. Sampson finished on 37 not out from eleven deliveries with one four and five sixes; 34 of his runs came in boundaries. For perspective, the other seven Guyana batters made 80 runs from 100 balls between them. Romario Shepherd fell at 115, Pretorius faced one ball, and the chase was done in the nineteenth over.

It would be easy to write the Kings off on the basis of 73 for 8, and it would miss what they did afterwards. Obus Pienaar and Maheesh Theekshana added 38 for the last wicket from 29 balls — Pienaar making 35 from 28 before he was caught by Tahir off Shepherd — and turned a total that would have been embarrassing into one that could be defended. Then the bowlers very nearly did it.

Joshua Bishop bowled four overs of left-arm spin for 17 and did not take a wicket; the pressure he built was a large part of why Guyana were only 40 for 1 at halfway. Chase took three for 34, Theekshana and Asalanka one each, and at 98 for 5 needing 22 from 17 the Kings had given themselves a genuine chance. Sampson took it away, and no plan in cricket is entirely proof against five sixes in eleven balls.

The problem was, again, the batting beyond two men. Pooran and Pienaar made 78 of the 119; the other nine batters managed 38 from 50 balls. Seifert, whose 105 not out against Trinbago remains one of the innings of this tournament, made 4. It was the Kings' third defeat in a row, and it ended their league programme.

The night before, on this ground, the Falcons made 182. This time neither side reached 125, and the scorecard is clear about why. The slower bowlers — Tahir, Mehidy, Pierre and Phillips for Guyana; Chase, Theekshana, Bishop and Asalanka for the Kings — delivered 27 of the 37.2 overs bowled, conceded 169 runs and took 13 of the 16 wickets. The seamers bowled a little over ten overs between both sides for 69 runs and three wickets.

Seven of the Kings' ten wickets were bowled or lbw, which on its own suggests either a ball that did not always get up or bowlers attacking the stumps without relief — probably both. We do not have a pitch report to confirm it. What the numbers do say is that on this surface, 119 was not a hopeless total, and that it took an innings of an entirely different tempo from everyone else's to make it look inadequate.

Imran Tahir bowled four overs for 17 and took five wickets, and he also took the catch that ended the innings. He had a hand, in other words, in six of the Kings' ten dismissals — as captain, the night after his side's first defeat of the season, on the ground where it happened.

At 47 years and 166 days, he is reportedly now the oldest man to take a five-wicket haul in T20 cricket. That is the kind of record that invites a joke about age, and the right response is to look at how the wickets fell instead: Pooran, the Kings' one set batter, leg-before; Chase lbw second ball; Clarke and Forde bowled; Bishop lbw. Leg-spin has always asked the batter which way the ball is going to turn. Five Kings got the answer wrong with the ball heading for their stumps.

Asked afterwards what keeps him going, Tahir reportedly pointed to his son, who keeps asking him for one more year. On this evidence, the request is not unreasonable.

We backed the right side. Both our previews leaned towards the Guyana Amazon Warriors, and they won. But the reasons we gave were largely not the reasons they won, and it is worth being honest about that.

Both previews were written while Guyana were still unbeaten; by the time the Kings arrived, the Falcons had changed that. We described Providence as a pace-friendly surface with true bounce; spin took 13 of the 16 wickets. We framed the match around Mohammad Nabi against Tim Seifert — Nabi was our GAW player to watch — and neither contest happened: Nabi was not in the XI, and Seifert was leg-before to Pretorius for 4 in the powerplay. We named Hetmyer as the batter most likely to decide the game; he made 14 from 13, and it was Sampson, whom we did not mention, who decided it.

Our SLK player to watch was Matthew Forde, on the grounds that early wickets from him could expose Guyana's middle order. He bowled 2.3 overs for 13 and took one wicket, Shepherd's, at 115 for 6 — tidy, late and not decisive. One conditional aged badly: we said that if the Kings batted first they would need something like 180 to make it a genuine contest. They batted first, made 119, and still made it one — which says more about the Kings' bowlers, and the surface, than about our threshold. And we asked whether Roston Chase could produce another match-shaping spell. Three for 34, including Hetmyer, came close.

Guyana Amazon Warriors are 7-1 with 14 points and a net run rate of +1.029, and with the Falcons' league programme already complete on 13, first place is theirs. The two results at Providence this week are worth reading together: one night they were rushed and beaten by 65 runs, the next they were squeezed and nearly came unstuck chasing 120 before Sampson bailed them out. What they did not do on either night was score quickly through the middle overs against good spin, and that is the issue they will want to address before the knockouts.

The table after 31 league matches: Guyana Amazon Warriors 14 points from eight, Antigua and Barbuda Falcons 13 from ten, Jamaica Kingsmen 8 from nine, Saint Lucia Kings 8 from ten (NRR -0.887), St Kitts and Nevis Patriots 7 from nine, Trinbago Knight Riders 6 from nine, Barbados Tridents 6 from seven. The Kings have finished their league fixtures and now have to wait on everyone else, with a net run rate of -0.887 that is unlikely to help them if it comes down to a tie on points.

And the name to remember is Quentin Sampson's. He made 12 the night before in a collapse. Given thirty-four balls and a required rate of nine an over, he needed only eleven of them.