Royals won the toss and elected to chase. The start was ideal for the Royals who applied an early dent into the Conquerors with a wicket falling on the first ball of Zeeshan Anjum on Naveed Hanif’s bowling. The conquerors were watchful after their early setback, with opener Nabil Khalid and Abdul Munaf slowly consolidating and not looking to allow any more wickets to fall in the powerplay. Both Nabil and Munaf paced the partnership well, putting on 90 runs for the 2nd wicket to fall in the 12th over.

With the partnership finally broken, the conqueror’s batsmen to follow all came in and tried to excel with the foundation laid for them, but none of them could really capitalise. Nabil, who was carrying the bat throughout the innings inflicted the most damage to the Royals having scored a fantastic 98* off 57 balls (171 strike rate). Nabil paced his innings brilliantly whilst Rizwan Baloch carried a threat throughout his 4 overs picking up 4-21 with an economy of 5.25. Besides Nabil, a late innings cameo of 14 off 7 balls by Naghman helped the Conquerors reach a good total of 173-6 by the end of their 20. The Royals would need to score 8 and a half runs per over to chase down this total if they were to do so.

The start was less than ideal for the Royals, who fell prey to the excellent new ball skill of the veteran swing bowling of Mohsaf Gondal, who trapped Umair and Zeeshan within the powerplay. A lot depended on the dangerous left handed batsman Fawad Bajwa to provide his side with some momentum in the chase, but this wasn’t to be the case as he couldn’t muster an innings of impact this time and fell victim to the impressive Naghman Masood for 16. Naghman’s spell of 3-16 in his 4 overs would have been the defining spell of the game and pretty much put the chase out of the equation.

Some fight by Farukh Tahir (28 off 28) gave the Conquerors a chance to take this game a little more deeper, but there was too much left to do for the Conquerors at 107-7 by the 16th over. Whilst Rizwan Baloch late innings carnage of 46* from 22 (209 strike rate) was brilliant and enabled the MC to still stay within reach, it was a little too late and couldn’t get them close enough as they eventually fell 13 runs short of the total.

Some fantastic individual performances from both sides. Nabil Khalid was rightfully awarded the MOTM award, but the all round performance of Naghman should also be appreciated for the impact it had on the game. A great individual performance by Rizwan Baloch as well, but he most certainly would have liked to have been on the winning side.

Scorecard summery is as follows;

Man of the Match;