On the opening night of the second season of the T10 League, Brendon McCullum scored at an alarming strike rate of 262.50. He fell 200 strike rate points short of his batting partner.
Mohammad Shahzad lit up the season-opener for the T10 League 2018 with a barely-believable piece of hitting, smashing 74 off just 16 balls to take his team Rajputs to victory over Sindhis by chasing down a target of 95 – in 4 overs.
The Afghan keeper-batsman’s freakish blitz saw him belt 14 boundaries in a 16-ball stay, with zero dot balls and a strike rate of 462.50.
It’s not as if Shahzad’s merciless hitting came against some pedestrian bowling attack; the four bowlers to roll their arms over for the Sindhis were Mohammad Nawaz, Jofra Archer, Thisara Perera and Fawad Ahmed.
Of the four bowlers used, Nawaz was the least expensive – conceding 20 – while Perera, a T20 veteran at both the international and franchise level was tonked for 30.
McCullum was more than happy to play ‘second fiddle’ with an 8-ball 21, with the best seat in the house to witness Shahzad’s carnage.
The Sindhis’ total if 94/6 was aided largely by captain and former Australian World Cup winner Shane Watson’s 42 off 20 balls, with former India pacer and 2011 WC winner Munaf Patel the pick of the Rajputs’ bowlers with figures of 3/20.
Of course, none of that made any of the headlines around the game, all reserved, exclusively and deservedly, for Shahzad. With an IPL auction right around the corner, the 30-year-old couldn’t have possibly timed his heroics much better.
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