Monday, November 17, 2008

Badshahs take revenge on Heroes

What an excellent innings from Imran Nazir...

I expected this match to be interesing as in the 2nd fianl, but Nazir made it look one-sided. He took Badshahs to a comfortable 8-wicket win in the 3rd final of best of 3 finals to win this season's ICL title. He blasted a sparkling 44-ball 111 with 7-4s and 11-6s.

Hyderabad Heroes couldn't retain their championship. After losing the first final, Heroes came back strongly and won the 2nd final with plenty of drama to make it to the third final. Both the finals were a bit close.

Badshahs won the first match by 4 wickets after they were asked to chase 170. The 2nd one very close match. Defending 158, Heroes did well to win the match by taking wickets at regular intervals. But Sami and Saqlain batted well and were looking to take the match away from Heroes. But a stunning catch from Kemp sent Sami back to the pavilion. But even after all the umpires gave it out, Badshahs were not happy and play was stopped for sometime, and finally they agreed. Run-out of Saqlain in the last over ended Badshahs chase and Heroes won the match by 8 runs.

Rana Naved was the man of the series for his all round performance in the tournament. He was the the highest wicket taker of the tournament with 22 from 11 matches and also scored 189 runs from 11 matchs with an average of 27.00 with 2 fifties.

ICL has been a success with almost 90% of the stadiums filling up. With this success they move on to the next tournament ICL 20s World Series. ICL 20s World Series will start on Nov 23rd which features the teams ICL India, ICL Pakistan, ICL Bangladesh, and ICL World. Each team will play a match against the other 3 teams and the final will take place between the top 2 teams on 29th November.

It will be much more interesting.....

No comments: