- Virender Sehwag’s Gemini Arabians won the inaugural Masters Champions League after beating Brian Lara’s Leo Lions by 16 runs at Dubai on Saturday.
- Rana Naved-ul-Hasan picked up figures of 4/9 which includes a hat-trick.
- Kumar Sangakkara and Justin Kemp scored 30 and 32 respectively.
Virender Sehwag’s Gemini Arabians won the inaugural Masters Champions League after beating Brian Lara’s Leo Lions by 16 runs at Dubai on Saturday.
After the Arabians scored a low total of 130, Pakistani fast bowler Rana Naved-ul-Hasan’s hat-trick helped them to bundle out the Lions for just 114. Rana ended up with fantastic figures of 4/9.
The Lions didn’t get off to the best of starts. They lost three of their top order batsmen in the first three overs.
Skipper Lara and opener Hamish Marshall began re-constructing the innings thereafter. They added 56 runs together until Lara had to go off the field due to a hamstring strain. Scott Styris joined Marshall and continued the fight back.
But, hell broke loose when Marshall was wrongly given out LBW. The opener inside-edged the ball onto his pads when he was trying to cut a sharply turned ball off Saqlain Mushtaq’s bowling.
A couple of overs later, Shivnarine Chanderpaul took a fabulous catch to dismiss Scott Styris off Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling.
Then, Rana destroyed the lower order. He picked up J Botha, H Streak and Lara, who came back to bat 95/7 in three consecutive deliveries to turn the match in Arabians’ favour.
Earlier, the Arabians also got off to a terrible start, losing Sehwag for just nine runs in the fourth over. Kumar Sangakkara and Justin Kemp played valuable innings of 30 off 26 and 32 off 29 respectively and put the Arabians on track. But they lost some wickets in quick succession in the latter part of their innings which hampered their bid for a big score.