Kowloon Cricket Club were crowned 2020 Hong Kong T20 Premier League champions, after their win in the final against Hong Kong Cricket Club, that concluded the five-week tournament, which marked the resumption of domestic men’s cricket since the suspension of all cricket activities in March 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Kowloon were dominant throughout the competition, remaining unbeaten in the process, and a tense final saw the likes of Rory Cox, Aizaz Khan, Daniel Pascoe and Jamie Atkinson rise up to the occasion against a spirited Hong Kong Cricket Club, who took the match to the final over with some late strikes in Kowloon’s chase as Haroon Arshad and Luke Jones tried to sneak in from behind to claim victory from the jaws of a likely defeat, which looked certain till the 16th over in the chase.
HKCC’s total in the final was largely due to a crucial innings by Nizakat Khan at the top of the order, and some late hitting down the order by Ryan Buckley, but eventually was not enough to topple Kowloon. Rory Cox and Aizaz Khan provided the best possible start to Kowloon’s innings at the top, and it shows in their overall stats for the competition, as they feature in the top 6 highest run-scorer’s in the competition.
Kowloon must also thank opening bowler Jason Davidson, who was instrumental in giving the team the perfect start by removing Hong Kong’s opening batsman and the competition’s leading run-scorer, Martin Coetzee, cheaply in both the group stage match between the teams and the all-important final. The stats for Coetzee tells the story, as out of his 294 runs in the competition from 5 innings, he only managed to score 12 runs in his 2 outings against Kowloon. Jason finished the second highest wicket-taker in the competition with 9 wickets from 5 matches, and was bettered by his own team-mate Daniel Pascoe, who took 10 wickets in the competition from as many games.
Pakistan Association Cricket Club (champions from previous year’s inaugural edition of the Premier League T20), United Services Recreation Club and Diasqua Little Sai Wan Cricket Club were the other teams in the competition. Although the teams did not manage to reach the top 2 positions at the end of the group stages, there were notable individual performances from the likes of Anas Khan, Yasim Murtaza, Ali Mohammed, Kinchit Shah, Ehsan Khan, Babar Hayat, Ahan Trivedi and Luke Jones.
Cricket Hong Kong also conducted few T20 matches between the Premier League schedule, which featured most of the national squad members and domestic players on the fringe of breaking into the senior squad, as a combined Aizaz XI (Blue) took on Kinchit XI (Red) in CHK T20 Challenge. Hong Kong players look to get back into the thick of things when their next domestic tournament takes place in the 50-overs format, with their postponed rounds of Challenge League competitions to take place in 2021/2022.
