Captain Hammad Butt won the toss and elected to bat first on a warm evening at Cheam CC. Adeel Ahmed began the batting proceedings and was keen to lay down the law on the TK bowlers, having given the Warriors a blistering start of 27 in the first 3 overs of the match. The knights were up against it, but they made gradual in roads with wickets falling in the 3rd and 7th over with the score at 48-2. Adeel carried on with his fluent approach and racked up a 51 off 33 balls (154 sr). Some good batting by Waqas Malik (36 off 31) alongside skipper H Butt ensured that the Warriors would continue to chip away towards a good total. The strong batting efforts of Hammad, who struck 48 with a strike rate of 171, meant that the Knights would need to score at 8 runs per over to get their first win on the board. The total set was 161-5 in 20 by the Warriors.

Continuing from where he left off in the previous game, Hafiz Zafarullah was in no mood to show mercy with the bat, having totally stunned the warriors with some ferocious strokes from the get go! Although the Warriors pegged two back in the powerplay (Yasir and Aqib both getting a wicket each) with the score at 19-2 in 2.2 overs, they had no answer to the onslaught they had to face of Zafarullah, who helped the Knights add a further 40 runs off 16 balls in the powerplay.

Zafarullah’s devastating stay at the crease finally came to a halt, much to the relief of the warriors when Hamza Sultan provided them with the breakthrough. With a scintillating knock of 41 off 16 at a strike rate of 256, Hafiz sab had made the equation a lot more simpler for his side to chase down the remaining runs at an affordable 7 runs per over required.

The Knights captain Waseem Ahmed understood the assignment ahead of him with 6 wickets remaining in the hut and the score at 68-4 in 6.2 overs. Waseem did the bulk of the run scoring in a 35 run partnership with Azeem for the 5th wicket, but this wasn’t to be the case for the next partnership for the knights. Safeer Ahmed who bowled well for his side with figures of 1-24 for the knights now had a job to do with the bat alongside his skipper, and he didn’t let him down in this facet of the game either. Whilst Waseem responsibly stayed at the crease and scored an unbeaten 56 off 54, he watched Safeer run the warriors bowlers into the ground with an electric 31 off 15 balls striking at 213.

Eventually, the Knights rallied to the final total with 5 wickets in hand and 7 balls to spare. A convincing victory for the Knights having suffered heartbreak in their first match of the season.

Scorecard summery is as follows;

Man of the Match;