Leicestershire 194 for 5 (Nabi 86*) beat Lancashire 190 for 5 (Davies 94) by five wickets
Scorecard
A savage and brilliant innings of 86 not out in only 32 balls by Afghan allrounder Mohammad Nabi secured a stunning five-wicket victory for Leicestershire Foxes in their North Group match against Lancashire Lightning at Emirates Old Trafford.
Coming to the wicket with his side on 92 for 5 in the eleventh over and needing another 99 runs to win the game, Nabi tore the Lancashire attack apart, hitting eight sixes and four fours as the visitors cruised home with eight balls to spare.
Ateeq Javid, Nabi’s partner in an unbroken sixth-wicket stand of 102, made only 15 not out but finished the game with a pull for four off Matthew Parkinson in front of a crowd 9525, most of whom were probably stunned by what they had just witnessed.
Much earlier in the evening Alex Davies had made a career-best 94 not out in the home side’s 190 for 5 and that total had looked plenty when the home side lost a wicket in each of the first three overs of their innings, left-arm spinner Mark Watt taking a wicket with only his second ball for Lancashire.
Colin Ackermann and Ben Raine repaired the innings to some extent with a stand of 77 but both fell to successive balls from Parkinson. That, though, only prepared the stage for Nabi, whose previous highest score in this year’s Vitality Blast was 32.
Nabi hit almost all of Lancashire’s bowlers for sixes and some of them cleared the boundary by over thirty yards. It was as astonishing a hitting innings as even this great ground has seen.
The centrepiece of Lancashire’s innings was the batting of Davies. The diminutive right-hander scored most of his early runs with ferocious drives as his side levied 77 runs in the six Powerplay overs and he then helped later batsmen consolidate that progress when the Foxes’ skipper, Colin Ackermann opted to take pace off the ball.
Lancashire’s early surge was checked when Zak Chappell took two wickets in three balls, first having Karl Brown caught at cover by Harry Swindells for 29 and then bowling Arron Lilley for 4, Indeed, it was not until the 17th over that Lancashire doubled their rich haul from the first six overs.
However, T20 debutant Josh Bohannon helped Davies add 58 for the third wicket in 7.3 overs and Steven Croft joined the opener in a 48-run stand for the fifth but most of the burden fell on Davies who batted through the innings, hitting eleven fours and two sixes.
Lancashire’s top order was lacking a trio of batsmen either injured or on Test duty and Davies’ innings was certainly needed as the home side certainly struggled against the Foxes’ slower bowlers.
Chappell was the only Foxes bowler to take two wickets but the efforts of Ackermann, who took 1 for 23 in three overs, and Neil Dexter were quite as valuable in checking the Lightning’s progress.
Left-armer Callum Parkinson also bowled well on his return to Old Trafford and his figures of 0 for 36 in four overs did him little justice.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo