Chennai Superstars win ICL's first T20 tourney

Shabbir Ahmed's incisive swing bowling broke the back of Chandigarh Lions as Chennai Superstars won the inaugural edition of the ICL Twenty20 championship at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium on Sunday.

Needing 156 to win, Chandigarh Lions could reach only 143-8 to lose the match by 12 runs, despite some big hits by Andrew Hall (30 n.o, 27b 3x4) and Sarabjeet Singh in the last couple of overs.

Chennai Superstars' win was set up by the new ball pair of Shabbir Ahmed, who was named the Man of the match for his four wickets for 23 runs, and Man of the Series Ian Harvey. The duo took six wickets between them including that of Lions skipper Chris Cairns.

Lions did not get off to an auspicious start losing Imran Farhat in the very first over and then Hamish Marshall, too, was back in the dug-out by the end of the third over. Both batsmen failed to negotiate the swing of Ahmed and only managed to edge the ball into the gloves of wicketkeeper Chris Read.

Soon Manish Sharma fell after adding just four runs to the total that read 30-3 in 4.4 overs.
However, Tejinder Pal Singh kept Lions in the hunt with some lusty blows. He hit one six and four fours in his 33-ball 35 before Tamil Kumaran took a well-judged catch at the mid wicket boundary off the bowling of Ganapathi Vignesh.

With Dinesh Mongia and Cairns still left, the Chennai team was still the second favourite. And when Mongia started finding the boundaries it looked that the Lions were on course.

Courtesy:cricketnext.com
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