On paper, Saturday’s opening match was a mis-match with top of the table Avengers taking on the NL Tigers, still looking for their first win. It turned out to be an exciting, close match, with the Avengers winning, but only just. Mubasshir Khan made exactly 50, well supported by Adeel Ilyas with 36, as the Tigers made 146/6 from their twenty overs. Maanik Arora got his name on the honours board again with a hat-trick to go with last week’s century. Arise Mahmoud had Rahul Vashishtha caught first ball, and added a second wicket in his first over; the Avengers were in trouble at 30/4 before Maanik Arora (58) and Daxraj Mehta put on 70 for the 5th wicket. After Maanik was dismissed, wickets continued to fall with three run outs, but thanks to Daxraj Mehta’s unbeaten 36, the Avengers won with two wickets and 9 balls to spare.
Scorecard
The second match saw the Royal Challengers beat the Eagles by 5 wickets. Mukul Dhawan had the Eagles in trouble from the start with an opening spell in wihch he took four wickets conceding just 7 runs. The Eagles were 25/5 but Waqas Ali (28), Arif Rehman (22) and Safwan (22) took them to 125 all out. Bhupesh Sharma top-scored with 39, and Manvir Mann made 22 not out, as the Royal Challengers passed the target in the 19th over with 5 wickets in hand. Waqas Ali took 3/15 in the losing cause.
Scorecard
After the Avengers winning streak came to an end last week, this week the Tigers losing streak also ended- after a long succession of defeats, they finally recorded a 59 run victory over the Eagles. This was founded on an excellent 70 run opening stand between Arafat Al Nabi (46) and Sadman Amin (22). Adeel Ilyas made 38*, and they totalled 159/5.
The Eagles struggled against some good bowling, led by Baizur Rahman who took 4/18. They were bowled out for exactly 100.
Scorecard