On Sunday, the San Francisco Unicorns started their campaign in the second season of Major League Cricket (MLC) with an impressive six-wicket win against Los Angeles Knight Riders (LAKR) at Dallas’ Grand Prairie Stadium.
This was the first defeat in this edition for the Knight Riders who launched their campaign with a comeback victory over Texas Super Kings during tournament opener. However, very little could be done by these two teams compared to Unicorns’ much superior performance.
Nevertheless, none of the LAKR batsmen had any chance to push on and it was only West Indian Andre Russell’s cameo of 40* off 25 that bring about some respectability as they posted 165 for 6 on board.
Jason Roy (26), Shakib Al Hasan (35), Nitish Kumar (20) and David Miller (24) all got starts but couldn’t convert it into anything substantial.
Unicorn’s Brody Couch (2/24) and Pakistan fast bowler Haris Rauf (2/38) led the bowling honours after his skipper Corey Anderson opted to bowl first having won the toss.
The chase from San Francisco was guide by New Zealand opener Finn Allen who scored 63 off 37 balls including ten boundaries and three sixes and Australia’s Matthew Short’s cameos knock of 58 from just 26 balls; this took them to a winning total of 181 for two wickets down.
James Fraser-McGurk was dismissed early by Spencer Johnson on nine runs when he got caught out while attempting a pull shot. In his four overs spell, Johnson ended up taking three wickets for thirty six runs.
Nonetheless, besides veteran Windies spinner Sunil Narine who managed one scalp at cost of thirty nine runs; others were not able to take any wicket except Spencer Johnson who took Three(39).
So, they achieved their target quite easily, finishing with 15.2 overs to spare.
Allen went on to say, “It was good, probably took a bit long to figure out the pace of the wicket. I and Jake went too hard early. The way Shorty (Matthew Short) came out and took pressure off me was good.”
