For quite some years now, the Australian cricket team has been known for producing its best when it matters the most, i.e during the knockout stages of important tournaments.
That tradition was not reversed during the cash-rich Champions League either as the final saw the side from Australia, New South Wales thump the undefeated-till-then Trinidad & Tobago by 41 runs. In the final played at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium at Hyderabad, Daren Ganga won the toss and elected to chase a score.
Simon Katich on this part wasn’t too disappointed with that as he said that he’d wanted to bat 1st anyway. None of his top order batsmen got to a substantial score though and it was left to some late order heroics from Brett Lee to see that the team puts up a decent total. His innings of 48 that contained five massive 6s helped NSW get to 159/9.
That was a target that the batting-heavy T&T would have fancied to get to. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be their night as their batsmen perished one after another. Kieron Pollard threatened to repeat his magic with three massive 6s in two overs but he too couldn’t sustain the momentum. In the end, it turned out to be a one-sided affair with NSW bowling the opposition out for 118 in 15.5 overs. Brett Lee’s performance with both, bat and ball earned him the ‘Man of the Match’ award and for his consistent performances throughout the tournament, he was also rewarded with the ‘Man of the Series’ trophy.
Warner ‘played and missed’ a few shots but he did manage to hit a few boundaries in between. In contrast, Phillip Hughes wasn’t getting much of the strike and eventually got out in the 4th over of the innings. Simon Katich hit two 6s off one Dwaye Bravo over but in between lost Warner and later in the next Bravo over threw his own wicket away with a soft dismissal. The batsmen to follow couldn’t really build any momentum either until Brett Lee joined Steven Smith. The pair added 49 for the 7th wicket with Lee being particularly severe on the bowling hitting 5 massive hits over the boundary. 65 all-important runs came in the final six overs of the innings as the team reached a respectable 159/9 in the allotted 20 overs. For T&T, Ravi Rampaul was the most successful bowler with figures of 4-0-20-3.
Brett Lee wasn’t done in for the day as he picked up William Perkins in his very 1st over of the T&T chase. Adrian Barath hit Lee’s bowling partner Steven Smith for 14 runs off his 1st three balls but ended up giving his wicket in the final ball off the 2nd over. Lee got another victim in his next over and by the end of the power-play overs, T&T had lost another one in the form of Dwayne Bravo as their score read 47/4. Even when their skipper Ganga got out at the end of the 10th over, their hopes however hadn’t receded completely. It was after all, Kieron Pollard who’d walked in next and it didn’t take him long to announce his intentions. By the time he’d reached 26, three 6s were already hit but once he perished in the pursuit of another maximum, NSW smelt blood and then went for the kill. Pollard’s was the 8th wicket and then in the very next over, the final two wickets were also grabbed thereby ensuring that the inaugural Champions League title was won by New South Wales.