MIEvGG Report: Farooqi survives Overton scare to hand us OUR FIRST WIN of ILT20 2024

The scorecard might tell you a comfortable 18-run win, but don’t be fooled. For the entire MI Emirates OneFamily glued in and chewing our nails in frenzy, this was never won until it actually was. Okay, let’s recap it for you..

Nicky P announces his arrival! 

There are few better sights in cricket than a left-hander in full flow. And when that left-hander happens to be a certain Nicholas Pooran, our leader, our legend, our skipper, there’s nothing better. 51 runs off 28 balls with three fours and four sixes. And for those 45 minutes that he was out there, it almost felt like he was batting on a different surface. 

Tim, the exploder! 

Apart from Pooran, for the longest time, none of our other batters could quite get going. Until Tim David arrived. He walked in with 17 balls to spare, faced 15 of them, and smashed 41 runs in a brutal death-overs assault. It was his knock that was the difference between what could have been an under-par 160, and the strong 179 it ended up being. 

Dail Farooqi for breakthrough

48/0 in just 5.1 overs. Dial Farooqi. The match getting tight with Jamie Overton playing the cameo of his life and taking it really close, dial Farooqi. From 48/0, he struck twice in two balls to make it 48/2. And with 37 runs needed off the last two overs, he cleaned up Overton with a full tailing-in delivery. And then goes on to nail a direct hit after running across the pitch to catch fellow Afghan player, Karim Janat, short of his ground off the next ball, and then to make it a team hat-trick, traps Chris Jordan LBW. 

“The pitch was swinging a bit more in the first innings. But when we were bowling, it wasn’t swinging as much. When I came in to bowl, I asked Trent Boult what was happening, and he told me it was seaming. So I was looking to do just that – hit good areas and not give away boundaries. Got a good result with that and with slower balls,” he said in the post-match press conference.  

Just like that, the match was firmly in MI Emirates’ kitty, and so were two important points to kickstart our upward ascend in this year’s ILT20.