Super Strikers 171/5 in 20 overs ( Ashmani Roy 78, Manoj 27, Deepak 2/23) Defeated The Crushers 166/8 in 20 overs ( Shrey 82, Ramanuj 25 Vivek 2/26) by 5 runs
After over 90 days and 27 games and a lot of excitement, The Indus Valley Cricket Ground was ready to host the two finalists who were ready with their respective arsenals to fire the opposition. With 5 wins out of 6, the Crushers came in as favorites but the strikers too had 3 of top 5 batsmen of the tournament in their squad. Abhay Thakur, the crushers’ captain elected to field first as it was an early morning game and he wanted his pace bowlers to exploit the conditions. After getting a decent start, Strikers lost Varun via a direct throw from Nishant which bought in Ashmani on strike. Bhupinder and Vivek followed him soon and Strikers were in a spot of bother at 53/3 in 9th over. Manoj Sharma joined in Ashmani to bail them out of the trouble with an 82 run partnership in just 48 balls. Ashmani (78 off 53, 10*4, 2*6) kept the strike most of the times as he slaughtered the bowlers all around the park. Manoj ( 27 off 21, 3*4) ensured that the batsman in touch was kept on strike. The pair targeted second string Crusher’s bowlers with good effect while keeping away the good ones. A target of 172 was always going to be a stiff one but the Crushers came into the finals by literally crushing the target of 154 with 19 balls remaining in the first qualifiers. They lost Hitesh Dhar in the very first over but Ramanuj and Shrey started a counterattack as they accumulated 71 in the powerplays. The horrendous powerplay ended for the strikers when Manoj cleaned up Ramanuj with a beauty and the Crushers captain, Abhay Thakur followed him soon. Although in a good health, the crushers needed a partnership. Kunal Joined Shrey and played almost identical rile to what Manoj played earlier for the strikers. Manoj ensured strike for Shrey (82 off 55, 13*4) and Crushers were cruising. With 21 required of 24, the celebration in Crushers dug out would already have started. But the game of cricket can be ruthless at times. The celebrations can end up being mourning in no time and we have seen thousands of such moments. This game was no different. Vivek removed Kunal on the last ball of 16th and this is where a collapse begins. A memorable collapse for the Strikers , one to be remembered across all four seasons of the PPL history. The 14 balls between 16th and 18th over bought only 7 runs as new batsmen failed to bring Shrey on strike. When he finally got it, he threw away his wicket failing to cope with the mounting pressure. In the era of T-20s, 14 of 10 still was very gettable but Varun and Ashmani hardly gave any chance to the already unsettled batsmen and rest of the tasks were taken care of by the brilliant fielding from the Strikers to seal off the game.
