With Cricket getting global recognition, the time is not too far when the whole world will witness the peak Cricketing Era. Major League Cricket (MLC) starts its campaign on a promising note of excitement and thrill.
(Dwayne Bravo after getting the wicket of Russell. Photo - MLC Twitter)With the arrival of Major League Cricket – The USA’s very first professional T20 franchise cricket league. It will make a way for other young players in America to come and showcase their talent against some of the best players on a global level.
Texas Super Kings led by Faf Du Plessis is an extended franchise of the most successful IPL Team is full of players who have made their names on the global level. Whereas Los Angeles Knight Riders led by Sunil Narine is an extended franchise of 2 times IPL winning Team, KKR.
In the first encounter of Major League Cricket, which was played between Texas Super Kings and Los Angeles Knight Rider in Grand Prairie Stadium, USA where TSK defeated the LAKR by 69 runs. Sunil Narine the Captain of LAKR had won the toss and elected to bowl first against TSK.
After getting invited to bat first, Texas Super Kings lost its first wicket on a low score of 12 in the form of Faf du Plessis who got out on the very first delivery he faced. Then started the magic of Devon Conway, the man with the golden arm who has been in tremendous form since the IPL, made a solid partnership for the third wicket with David Miller who is also in terrific form, both contributed a half-century from their side with their scores 55 and 61 respectively. And good contributions from Santner and Bravo who scored also helped the team to reach a respected total of 181-6 after the completion of 20 overs. Talking about the bowling side of LAKR then no one contributed well from their side apart from Ali Khan and Ferguson, both took 2-2 wickets each at a crucial time. Zampa and Narine picked 1-1 wicket each.
After some brilliant knocks and putting a good score on the top, now it was time to outperform LAKR and they exactly did the same. With the brilliant bowling of both the bowlers of Rusty Theron and Gerald Coetzee, they broke the backbone of their top-order batsmen which included some big names like Martin Guptill and Rilee Rossouw, and stopped them from even scoring a double-digit mark.
No one from their list apart from Russell who was single-handedly trying to win the game, looked comfortable and they all threw their wickets in the end. Russell was the only batsman from their team who scored a half-century with figure 55 from 33. Mohsin Khan was the best bowler from the Texas Super Kings ending his figure with 4 wickets for 8 runs. For his brilliant knock of 61 from 42, David Miller got the Player of the Match award.
During the post-match presentation, Faf Du Plessis was really happy about his team’s performance and said, “Really pleased with the team’s performance. Nice to see some of the local boys perform. I always say that overseas players can win you a game but you need your local boys to win a tournament. The boys took a few big wickets and those two in the first over set the tone. (On Coetzee) He looks like a really exciting talent. One of those prospects who will hopefully play all three formats for South Africa. Good, aggressive South African fast bowler. Does not matter where you play in the world, the Super Kings family always comes out in great numbers.”
