An important toss was won by the Knights who elected to bat first.

The Stars who were without their MOTM from the last couple of games opened the bowling with Nazeef and Afaq, and both bowlers were right in the game early on with a wicket a piece in the opening two overs and applying serious pressure on Waseem’s side. With both openers back in the hut early, Daud Ahmed took his time to establish some control in the innings. Tehseen was quick to remove the opposition Captain Waseem in the 6th over for 9. Daud and Usman also lasted a further two overs leaving the Knights in an extremely difficult situation with the score at 5-48 in 8 overs.

With their campaign hanging on to a thread bare, a heroic 88 run partnership between Safeer and Zeyan Farhan helped the Knights dig themselves out of the deep hole they found themselves in. Zeyan’s outstanding innings of 57 from 24 balls included 3 fours and 6 sixes (237 strike rate) completely stunned the Stars, whilst Safeer was smart in anchoring the innings for his side to the end with a valiant 45* off 40 balls. The Knights finished their innings with 159 on the board, a score they would happily take being 48-5!

The Stars Skipper Harawal took it upon himself to chase these runs down from the outset as an opener. However, Harawal was very soon left standing watching his batsmen come for a short while and soon returning to the pavilion one after the other. From 39-0 in the 5th over, Harawal was witnessing his team crumble right before him as no batsman could apply themselves at the crease. Harawal would have liked Khurram to stand with him and build a foundation as they usually have done for the stars regularly, but this wasn’t to be as the knights superstar Zeyan (with the bat) was now right in contention for MOTM having caused the catastrophic run out of Khurram with the score at 3-57! With no real momentum building, the Stars continued to lose wickets and from 39-0 they had lost 9 wickets for 68 runs. The final wicket stand added 22 with Harawal scoring 60 off 45, but the Stars were eventually all out for 130, and 30 runs short of the target.

The Knights needed to win and they have done well to level themselves with the Stars, who are now also feeling the heat of the latter phase of the group stages. Zeyan was rightfully awarded the MOTM for his brilliant, match winning innings in a serious pressure situation.

Scorecard summary is as follows;

Man of the match;