Lahore Badshahs scored their sixth straight victory, beating Kolkata Tigers by 22 runs, in the 24th match of the Edelweiss 20s Challenge at the Lal Bahadur Stadium in Hyderabad on Friday night.
Hassan Raza was declared Man-of-the-Match for his fighting knock of 48.
Badshahs opened 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 thanks to 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 for 2. By the 17th over, they were 121/3, all set for an onslaught with mainstay Hasan Raza holding the key. They were finally restricted to 153-5 due to some fine work in the field.
The Tigers had a shaky start when the brilliant Mahmood knocked Das back to the dugout without troubling the scorers. Mahmood and Sami displayed high quality pace bowling and had the Tigers on their knees at 10-3, 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 rested on the shoulders of captain McMillan, who as out there in the middle in the company of Rohan Gavaskar.
At the half way mark of their innings, 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).
