Warriors bounce back to book place in final
Pooran, Simmons help team beat Maratha Arabians by 10 wickets
Northern Warriors who lost the qualifier to Pakhtoons, staged a strong comeback in the second eliminator and beat Maratha Arabians by ten wickets to book their place in the final of the T10 League to be held today at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium.
The final will now be a rematch of the first qualifier by the two best teams of the tournament. Warriors bowlers Hardus Viljoen with a three wicket spell, backed by Andre Russell and Wahab Riaz with two wickets ■ each, restricted Arabians to 72 for 8. The total was too small to stop the strong Warriors’ batting line up. Their openers Nicholas Pooran (43n.o) and Lendl Simmons (31n.o) helped their team win in just five overs.
At a time when Arabians needed to accelerate their run rate, their skipper Bravo hit high to Green off Viljoen to slip to 66 for 8. Viljoen also trapped van der Merwe leg before with the next ball. In the end Arabians could post only a small total.
Earlier, Alex Hales shattered the record of the highest individual score of the T10 League to steer Maratha Arabians to a seven-wicket victory over Bengal Tigers in the first eliminator at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium yesterday.
Hales cracked an unbeaten 87 off 32 balls, studded with eight sixes and six boundaries, to ensure his team a victory with five balls to spare. Sent into bat, Bengal’s opener Luke Wright fell for a duck in the fourth ball of the first over from Roelof van der Merwe. In the third over, Rashid Khan bowled skipper Sam Billings for only three but that did not stop Sunil Narine smashing two sixes in the same over.
Arabians’ chase began with opener and in-form aggressive batsman Hazratullah Zazai hitting the first ball and last ball of the opening over from Aamer Yamin for boundaries.