MI Emirates moved one step closer to winning their maiden ILT20 title as they thrashed the defending champions Gulf Giants by a margin of 45 runs on Wednesday (February 14) to advance to the summit clash of the second season.
The toss fell in favour of the defending champions, who elected to field first on a dry batting deck at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.
MI lost two of their batters inside their first five overs and soon lost their third as Kusal Perera got out after scoring 22 off 17 balls with the help of three fours.
Kusal’s wicket put Giants on top but not for long as the middle and the lower middle order of MI fought back strongly. Skipper Nicholas Pooran (36 off 28 balls), Dwayne Bravo (30 off 28 balls), Tim David (29 off 21 balls) chipped in with handy contributions and prepared the stage for Kieron Pollard to come and biff the ball.
Pollard played an impressive cameo (27* off 14 balls) and hammered three fours and a maximum to propel MI to 163 for the loss of seven wickets.
Daniel Worrall was the pick of the Giants bowlers as he bagged figures of 3/15 in his four overs and was supported well by Blessing Muzarabani who picked up 2/34 in his four overs.
In reply, Giants got off to a horrid start and could never really recover from the initial slump. Their star batters had a night to forget as skipper James Vince (0), Chris Lynn (18), and Shimron Hetmyer (7) walked back to the dugout fairly cheaply.
Some late fireworks by Chris Jordan (31 off 15 balls) enchanted the fans but it could only delay the inevitable as MI reigned supreme at the end and bundled Giants out for just 118 runs in 18.2 overs.