Jaguars bite back to take down City Kaitak in HKT20 Blitz opener by Tim Cutler
HKT20 Blitz got off to a smashing start with Hung Hom JD Jaguars taking down City Kaitak by 6 wickets in the opening game of the tournament at Mission Road on 06th Feb 2018. After restricting City Kaitak to 132/6 in their 20 overs, Jaguars chased it down by reaching 138/4 in 17.4 overs to open their account in the points table.
Nadeem Ahmed & Ben Laughlin, both finished with a miserly 19 runs taken from each of their four over spells. Laughlin picked up two wickets and Nadeem scalped one.
Laughlin’s change of pace bowling with a sub-50m boundary was a sight to behold and Nadeem’s four overs from the Victoria Harbour end was a great mix of off-pace left-arm orthodox. Last year his first two overs in the tournament went for 57 when Dwayne Smith took to him. Not so this year. Johan Botha (2) and Kyle Christie (1) also took wickets.
132 was always going to be hard to defend and with HK players Kinchit Shah and Nizakat Khan successfully negotiating the power play whilst seeing off 47 runs from the target.
Nizakat took a long time to get the pace of the wicket before playing some trademark wrist-offensives over the offside and straight. Kinchit also played some deft sweeps alongside some powerful drives including one of Sohail Tanvir over extra cover for a boundary.
Kinchit was caught by Raag Kapur at deep square leg for 22 off the bowling of Aizaz Khan and when Wessels and Nizakat fell with 8 balls City perhaps had a faint hope of victory, if there were able to take more Jaguars wickets.
It wasn’t to be however, and even though Dutchman van der Merwe also struggled with the pace of the wicket – he was able to compile 19 before he was dismissed by Tanivr from the 14th ball he faced. Sammy came to join Botha at the crease, and they completed the 13 runs required in only nine balls.
Sohail Tanvir was the pick of the City Kaitak bowlers with a miserly 4 overs, 1 for 20.
Rayad Emrit spoke after the game (video interview to Tim Cutler – YouTube link) of the team needing to adjust to the slightly slower pitch better, perhaps not going so hard in the powerplay – after watching the ease with which Aizaz batted – to counter attack later in the innings. Conversely, the only part of his team’s performance that needed improvement was some messy fielding according to Kinchit Shah who was very happy with his three spinners and Laughlin’s performance.
