Champions League T20 2011: The Warriors’ Prince Wins Them A Thriller
Prince smashed 74 and his partnership with his captain Johan Botha was worth 73 runs off 39 balls as Warriors ran away to a close win over Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opening game of the CLT20.
It was the first game of the Champions League T20 and the crowd could not have asked for a closer contest. Unfortunately for them, the home team Royal Challengers Bangalore, went down off the last ball to the Warriors at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore to allow the visitors run away with the full points.
Royal Challengers Bangalore would have thought that they had enough on the board when they got 172 in their 20 overs on admittedly a flat track. And with the Warriors needing to score 109 off the last 10 overs, the game seemed to be in their grasp but for a sixth wicket partnership between Ashwell Prince and Johan Botha.
Prince, man of the match for the match-winning half-century (74), and Botha, getting to a near fifty, almost saw the side home before they lost their wickets. Warriors were left with needing to score seven off the last over, a cakewalk in the context of the game, but three superb deliveries from Sreenath Aravind brought the equation down to seven from three needed.
A single later, it was six required off two, before Wayne Parnell hit a four and a couple to win the game for the previous CLT20 runner-up and bag the points. A distraught Bangalore will now need to pick up the pieces and move into their next game after six days.
Earlier, Bangalore, despite getting to 172, would have thought that they fell 10-15 runs short of where they should have got. This was mainly because five of their batsmen got starts but not one could kick on – there were scores between 23 and 31 in the innings.
Two overs were the turning points in the game; Rusty Theron got three wickets in the 19th for Warriors while Gayle went for couple of sixes in the 18th when the tourists batted to change things around for the Warriors.
