MI New York Tops Seattle Orcas for Major League Cricket Title
In its first season, Major League Cricket (MLC) MI New York - which finished 4th in the league standings during the regular season - upset the top-seeded Seattle Orcas 184/3 to 183/9 for a seven-wicket win.
Watch highlights of the final here: https://youtu.be/Vhlbsm61294
Here's a recap of the championship game from the league's website:
The championship game was a rematch of the final game of the regular season. With playoff implications on the line, Seattle was able to chase down MINY's 194 total in the final over thanks in no small part to Heinrich Klaasen's 110 not out from 44 balls. This one would also come down to a guy having a monster innings. And for the first half of the match, it looked like Quinton de Kock would be that guy.
Batting first after MI New York won the coin toss, the Orcas were slow out of the gate. After six overs, they were a lackluster 31/1. (And had it not been for a 15-run over off of former New Jersey Stallion Jessy Singh, making his MLC debut for New York, things would have been even more dire.) And that's when de Kock started stepping on the gas. The wicket-keeper's 87 from 52, aided by Shubham Ranjane's 29 and Dwaine Pretorius' explosive 21 from seven balls pushed Seattle over the 180 mark and set themselves up as the frontrunner for the title.
Credit the bowling -- and late-innings wicket-taking -- of Trent Boult and Rashid Khan for keeping Seattle under the 200 mark and New York in the match. Boult finished off the title game with three more wickets to bring his league-leading total to 22 and Khan was masterful, taking three wickets and limiting the Orcas to just nine runs in four overs.
New York continued fiddling with its opening batters, sending up a pair of domestic players -- Steven Taylor and Shayan Jahan -- to start the chase of 184, but Taylor was quickly dismissed by Imad Wasim without scoring a run. It was looking more than ominous for MINY when captain Nicholas Pooran was forced to come in so early at three, but that's when the tide turned. Pooran took little time to get to work. Almost immediately, he began pounding Orcas bowling. And it soon turned into an exhibition. New York was at 62/2 after six overs and broke the century mark in only the eighth over. Pooran got a little help from Shayan Jahangir (10), Dewald Brevis (20), and Tim David (10), but this was essentially a one-man show. The Trinidadian ended on 137 not out from 55 balls with ten fours, 13 sixes, a 249.09 strike rate, a championship trophy, and Player of the Tournament honors.
If you were going strictly by individual stats, this one would have been tough to predict. The top performers in just about every relevant batting and bowling category came from either Seattle or New York and that didn't change much after the title game. Pooran ended up on top of just about every offensive category with 388 runs and 34 sixes (NY's Tim David was second in sixes with 16). Boult was a wicket-taking machine -- especially in the post-season. And Nosh Kenjige announced himself to the cricketing world with a league-leading 5.73 bowling economy.
For Seattle, Heinrich Klaasen finished with a monstrous 197.47 strike rate, smashing 235 runs from the 119 balls he faced this season. Seattle's Cameron Gannon and Andrew Tye finished knotted at 11 for second place in wickets taken and Gannon, Imad Wasim, and Harmeet Singh all finished among the leaders in economy. For his efforts, Gannon -- the fourth-round pick of the Orcas in the domestic draft -- was named the Bart King Domestic Player of the Tournament.
Here are the final results to the season:
- Seattle Orcas (4-1)
- Texas Super Kings (3-2)
- Washington Freedom (3-2)
- MI New York (2-3)
- San Francisco Unicorns (2-3)
- Los Angeles Knight Riders (1-4)
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