Badshahs score sixth straight win in ICL

Hyderabad, Mar 28 (UNI) The 24th match of the Edelweiss 20s Challenge saw Kolkata Tigers taking on the Lahore Badshahs at the Lal Bahadur Stadium here with the Badshahs scoring their sixth straight victory.

The Badshahs beat the Tigers by 22 runs. Hassan Raza was declared the Man of the Match for his fighting knock of 48.

The Badshahs opened their account with the combine of the Imrans (Farhat and Nazir).

A great piece of fielding from Chandana saw Imran Nazir back to the pavilion resulting in the first breakthrough for the Tigers at 15/1. By the fifth over, the Badshahs were contained at 26/1 with some fine bowling from Andre Adams whose three overs cost only nine runs.

At the halfway mark of their innings, the Badshahs were delicately placed at 53/2. By the 17th over, the Badshahs were placed at 121/3 all set for an onslaught with the Badshahs mainstay Hasan Raza holding the key.

The Badshahs were finally restricted by some fine work in the field from the Tigers at 153/4.

The Tigers had a shaky start when the brilliant Mahmood knocked Das back to the dugout without troubling the scorers. Mahmood and Sami were displaying some high quality pace bowling and had the Tigers on their knees at 10/3 with their top three batsmen back in the dugout.

By the ninth over, the Tigers were facing an uphill task of needing another 113 off 66 balls at around 11runs per over.

A lot was resting on the shoulders of Captain McMillan who as out there in the middle for the Tigers in company of Rohan Gavaskar.

At the half way mark of their innings, the Tigers were placed at 48/4. Arshad Khan was turning the ball a mile and soon got the Badshahs the big break with the wicket of McMillan, leaving the Tigers innings reeling at 59/5.

At the end off the 16th over, the Tigers needed 62 runs off only 24 balls at over 15 runs per over and four wickets in hand. It proved too tall an order in the end for the Tigers, who finally fell short of the target by 22runs.

Brief scores: Lahore Badshahs 153/4 (T Umar 41, H Raza 48,Shiv Sagar 1/14) won by 22runs against Kolkata Tigers 131/7, (Gavaskar46, McMillan 30, Mahmood 2/25) UNI XR/AP GM GT KN2351