Once again Lahore Badshahs and Hyderabad Heroes were fighting out with each other in the ICL final and learning lessons from their loss in the last leg, Badshahs were well planned this time and they chose to field after winning the toss. Heroes finished their innings at 170 runs for 5 wickets. It was in the 13th over, Cricket360 noticed Razzaq wiping his face off in disbelief when Shahabuddin dropped a destructive Farhat as Razzaq was sure that his colleague not only dropped the catch but the match too!

Badshahs started their brutal act very early in the innings by smashing away Shahabuddin for 18 runs in the 2nd over. The replay was offered well by Razzaq as he succeeded in sending Nazir back with the help of Kemp for 26 runs in the 3rd over. Nazir’s blasting innings included 3 boundaries and 2 huge sixes. That didn’t make any difference to Badshahs as they got past 50 runs in the 4th over itself. They doubled the score within next 7 overs too. In the 12th over Farhat realized his 4th ICL fifty off just 31 balls laced with 4 sixes and 4 fours. Lastly Farhat fell before Anirudh for 65 runs in the 14th over at a score of 127 runs.

Inzamam could not survive long and was clean bowled by Harris for 5 runs and he once again put the opponents under pressure by unbelievably guiding a throw from Binny to run out Mohammed Yusuf for 11 runs at a score of 137 runs. Lahore players required only run a ball after the 15th over to win the match. Last overs were decorated with some thrilling movements and in the penultimate over Azhar brought the heart beats of Badshahs into normal pace by hitting a huge sixer off Razzaq and Khalid too joined him by hitting a boundary in the same over to level the scores. On the 1st delivery of the 20th over Azhar flicked Harris to another boundary to wind up the matter by a margin of 4 wickets with 5 balls to spare.

Earlier in the innings, Heroes were looked pretty  eased a side by Cricket360 as they batted with fabulous perfection, thanks to Razzaq who made 69 runs from just 46 balls by the time he fell prey to Rana Naved on the last delivery of their innings. Through out their batting, Heroes were well positioned with a run rate of above 8 runs. In 11.3 overs, they surpassed the 100 mark and Razzaq’s 5th ICL fifty came off just 31 balls. Maher too was in good form and he picked 45 runs from that many balls. But they could not bring in the required momentum in the last overs as they scored only 4 runs in the 20th over to end up with 170 runs for 5 wickets. The total of Heroes was well short of a certain 15 runs and that only made the difference at the end of the day as per Cricket360 .

Lahore Badshahs took an impeccable lead of 1-0 in the final of ICL Season 2 and things wouldn’t be easy for Heroes in the left out matches with the man of the match Farhat in dangerous form.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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