Chennai Super Kings: 158/6 (20 overs)
Highveld Lions: 159/4 (19.3 overs)
Highveld Lions won by six wickets
They may not be household names, but the young upstarts at the Highveld Lions are certainly causing waves at the Champions League T20 2012.
For the second game running, the South African T20 runners-up upstaged their more illustrious Indian Premier League opponents. They downed the Mumbai Indians on Sunday, and yesterday some timeous late-innings blows from the unheralded Jean Symes took the Johannesburg side over the line with three balls to spare.
Symes was superb during the closing overs, smashing 39 off just 23 balls. He showed that he had ice running through his veins, especially in the last over when he clubbed South African international Albie Morkel for two successive boundaries when the Lions required nine to win off the six balls. The lanky Chris Morris’s 12 not out cannot be discounted either, especially as he shared an unbroken 44-run partnership off just 20 balls with Symes.
Morkel’s reputation as a death bowler of any repute has really taken a pounding over the last couple of weeks after he was pulverised during the World T20 in Sri Lanka recently.
Neil McKenzie and Quinton de Kock were the Lions’ heroes at the Wanderers, while last night it was Symes and Gulam Bodi (64 off 46 balls) who made the telling contributions. The veteran left-hander shrugged off a sluggish start to unleash a superb array of attacking strokes all around the ground.
He particularly enjoyed Morkel’s medium-pace offerings, before launching an attack on Ravi Ashwin that the Indian off-spinner had not encountered in some time. Bodi’s inside-out lofted drive perfectly illustrated his dominance over Ashwin (0/42) on the night.
Although Morkel did eventually dismiss Bodi, McKenzie (32) and later Symes ensured the Indian-born batsman’s efforts were not in vain.
Chennai’s innings was a stop-start affair. Faf du Plessis brought the early impetus through some delightful straight hitting, but after his demise, courtesy of a brilliant Aaron Phangiso diving catch, the innings struggled to maintain momentum. Phangiso was not only outstanding in the field, but was miserly with the ball too.
He thrived in the Newlands conditions, bowling from the Kelvin Grove End primarily, and used the wind to vary his flight and pace to finish with the impressive figures of 2/17 to halt any momentum the former Champions League winners tried to create.
It was reflected in the individual scores, with six of the Super Kings batsmen passing 20, but only captain MS Dhoni going on to score 34. The skipper, like he successfully did in the World Cup final last year in Mumbai against Sri Lanka, promoted himself to No 4 to have enough time to influence the game. He partially succeeded, enjoying a 50-run partnership off 26 balls with S Badrinath (27 not out) for the sixth wicket to post a challenging total at Newlands.
Ultimately, though, the young Lions’ fearless attitude was enough to see them take a massive step towards semi-final progression.
Those who had wandered into Newlands at midday had the misfortune of watching a hopelessly one-sided affair. Australian champions, the Sydney Sixers, were far too powerful for Yorkshire, cruising home by eight wickets.
The Sixers needed just 8.5 overs to breeze past Yorkshire’s 96 after their seamers had created havoc in near-perfect conditions for batting.
The irony for the English county was that the two players who were pivotal in orchestrating their downfall were two former Yorkshire players, Michael Lumb (43 not out) and Mitchell Starc (3/15).