At Cheam Cricket Club, the striker’s captain Shakir won the toss and elected to bat first.

The decision to bat first hasn’t always proven to be ideal at Cheam this year, as was the case once again today with the Strikers soon at 26-3 by the 7th over. Besides Aamir Saeed, the top order for the Strikers really struggled to get going against the Warriors bowlers, who have found a good rhythm since their last match. Amir’s 47 off 38 helped the Strikers hang in the crease having not been blown away completely, and respectable contributions from Hamza Iqbal and Shakir (30 off 29) enabled the Strikers to reach a total of 134 in their 20. The warriors had put in some excellent work to restrict the opposition to a score that they would love to chase considering their desperate situation.

Sheikh Irfan wanted to get his side off to a flier as the warriors raced to 21 in the first 10 balls of the chase. Zeeshan provided the breakthrough at 21-1 in the second over. Both Laiq and Adeel tried to lay a foundation for their side to chase down the total with ease, batting cautiously with the score at 66-2 in 12 overs. Needing a further 69 runs in the last 8 overs, the Strikers were excellent in building pressure through some tight bowling and economical overs. Struggling to get the Strikers bowlers away, the Truthful warriors batsmen could do very little but to slowly watch their campaign diminish with each passing moment until eventually ending their innings falling 22 runs short of the total.

Hamza Iqbal’s spell of 2-17 in his 4 overs including his contribution of 15 runs was considered worthy of the MOTM award. A valuable 2 points for the Strikers who would feel much safer with 6 points on the board with a game in hand. The warriors however can only level 3 other teams who are already on the 6 point mark, and would require a serious net run rate to possibly advance to the next stage of this year’s KCL.

Scorecard summary is as follows;

Man of the match;