Published: Sep 27, 2014, 07:17 PM (IST)
Edited: Sep 27, 2014, 07:56 PM (IST)
By Sandipan Banerjee
Sep 27, 2014
An all-round display by Robert Frylinck went in vain as the Lahore Lions’ spinners helped the team from Pakistan to get an important victory by 16 runs against Dolphins in a Group A match of Champion’s League T20 (CLT20) 2014. With this victory, Lahore kept their hopes for semi-finals alive.
Lions spinners were on on top from the start of the Dolphins innings. The South African champions stumbled early on their chase of 165 against the slow bowlers. Left arm spinner, Mustafa Iqbal and got two of the three wickets. Mohammad Hafeez was the other successful bowler who took two wickets. Saad Nasim also took the important wicket of skipper Morne van Wyk (36) who was batting well. Among Dolphins batsmen only Frylinck was successful to put some pressure on the Lahore bowlers with a knock of 63 in just 27 balls. He single-handedly took the Dolphin’s score to 93 for nine in the 16th over to 148 nine at the end.
Earlier Umar Akmal‘s brilliant knock of 73 not out rescued Lahore lions and took the team’s total to a competitive 164 for five against the Dolphins, which seemed decent on a slow Chinnaswamy track. Saad Nasim also made a valuable 43 and his partnership with Akmal helped their team to recover from a position of 34 for four in the eighth over to a respectable score after the end of the innings.
Dolphin bowlers made good use of the slowness of the wicket. Specially at the first half of the innings, the Dolphins bolwers had a complete control upon the Lahore top order. The Pakistan champions made a bad start of their innings . They lost both openers, Ahmed Shehzad and Nasir Jamshed cheaply. Robbie Frylinck took those two wickets. In the sixth over Agha Salman, who got his chance in the match, lost his wicket to Kyle Abbott. Captain Mohammad Hafeez who was expected to take control of Lions innings also got out to Cameron Delport.
After that Umar Akmal and Saad Nasim steadied the Lahore innings. Akmal specially batted very aggressively. He reached his half century in just 31 balls. The partnership made 92 runs in just 8.5 overs. In the last nine overs of the innings, Lahore scored 109 runs which turned their fate, atleast in the first part of the innings.
This match match between Lions and Dolphins was virtually their battle for Survival in this year’s CLT20 2014. Lahore won the toss and decided to bat first. have won the toss and are batting first. For Lahore Agha Salman came in the playing eleven. On the other hand, Craig Alexander and Daryn Smit were out for Dolphins, and Prenelan Subrayen and Jonathan Vandiar were in.
Brief scores:
Lahore Lions 164 for 5 in 20 overs (Umar Akmal 73*, Saad Nasim 43; Robbie Frylinck 3 for 22) beat Dolphins 148 for 9 in 20 overs (Morne van Wyk 36, Robert Frylinck 63; Mohammad Hafeez 2 for 18, Saad Nasim 2 for 19) by 16 runs.
Man of the Match: Umar Akmal
Complete coverage of Champions League T20 (CLT20) 2014 here
(Sandipan Banerjee is a reporter at CricketCountry. Cricket has been the biggest passion for him since his childhood. So, when it came to choosing his career, he chose to turn his passion into his profession. Apart from cricket he likes mountain trekking, river rafting and photography. His twitter handle is @im_sandipan)
