RAWALPINDI: Rawalpindi Region stunned Karachi Blues by 22 runs on Monday in the eighth match of the Cool & Cool Presents JAZZ National T20 Cup 2016/17 being played here at the Pindi Stadium.
Awais Zia’s 45 runs innings and Aizaz Cheem’s three wickets burst enabled Rawalpindi to ease past Karachi Blues. Rawalpindi gathered 144 runs for seven wickets while playing at an average of just seven runs an over. And then kept Blues below the required run-rate to just allow them score 112 runs for seven wickets. Later, Awais for being the highest scorer and match-winning innings was declared the man of the match.
Awais and Mukhtar Ahmed opened Rawalpindi scoring with 41 runs for the first wickets and then Awais and Umar Amin took the score to 80. These two partnership were the foundation of their total. As Awais got 45 runs in 31 balls with the help of five hits across the rope and two over it, Mukhtar added 16, Umar got 15.
From among the latter coming batsmen, Asif Ali was prominent with the bat making 26 runs. Zahid Mansoor 11 and Hammad Azam 14 were the ones who reached double figures. Saeed Ajmal, Mohamamd Asghar with two wickets each while Rumman Raees with one wicket kept Rawalpindi batsmen relatively quiet but it was their batsmen who could not meet the demand of time.
In reply, Karachi Blues could not get the partnership that would have been looking for and their highest score came from their opener Khurrum Manzoor who made 30 runs. Their other recognised batsmen like Shahzaib Hassan 13, Khalid Latif 17, Fawad Alam 20 and Ali Khan 22 failed to develop their scored into match saving innings. Even Khurrum took 40 balls to reach his 30 and in total Karachi Blues hit just nine boundaries. Aizaz did the main damage by claiming three wickets while one each was credited to the accounts of Sohail Tanvir, Zulfiqar Babar, and Hammad Azam.
