Winning 2022 CPL title would "mean the world" to Tallawahs captain Rovman Powell

Written by Leighton Levy. Posted in CPL. | 29 September 2022 | 1849 Views
Tags: Cricket, Barbados Royals, Hero Cpl, Jamaica Tallawahs, Rovman Powell, T20

Rovman Powell said it would mean the world to him should he lead the Jamaica Tallawahs to the 2022 Hero CPL title when they take on the Barbados Royals in the finals at Providence, Guyana on Friday night.

The 29-year-old Powell is in his third season as captain but the previous two seasons did not go well for the soft-spoken Jamaica with the Tallawahs losing in the semi-finals in 2020 and failing to advance to the playoffs in 2021.

During the 2022 season, the Tallawahs began well winning their first three games before ending with a record of four wins, five losses and a no-result but managed to make it into the playoffs where they defeated the St Lucia Kings on Tuesday and then the dangerous Guyana Amazon Warriors by 37 runs in an exciting high-scoring encounter on Wednesday night to advance to the finals.

Winning it would be really special, Powell said.

“It would mean the world to me. The past two seasons that I have captained the team, it hasn’t gone well for the franchise, so now for us to be in the final, for me to captain the team to the final and maybe, a CPL championship would go well for me personally and go well for the franchise,” Powell said at a pre-final media conference on Thursday.

“The Tallawahs hasn’t tasted victory for a few years,” he said of the franchise that last won the title in 2016. “We have sat down and said we are a better franchise than that so hopefully, given the opportunity tomorrow (Friday) we will do our best to change that.”

Powell said the team is upbeat but taking it relatively easy on the eve of the final in preparation for the big game on Friday.

"The guys are feeling really upbeat. Barbados is a very strong team, possibly the best team in the CPL so far, so the guys are upbeat about facing the challenge," Powell said.

“The guys are looking forward to the championships. Today (Thursday) is a day when we just take it easy in a sense.

“We just came back down off the high of the game last night, put in a little bit of preparation, get in a little bit of rest and hopefully things go well tomorrow.”