Chennai Super Kings batter Sameer Rizvi churned out an MS Dhoni-like knock in the UP T20 League to help Kanpur Superstars come out of a tricky situation. Kanpur's captain Rizvi smashed 89 from 59 balls to provide a fighting total of 156 in his team's opening game in the state tournament against Lucknow Falcons at the Ekana Cricket Stadium, Lucknow.
Walking out to bat at number 5 when the team was 16/3, Rizvi played a masterful knock. He saw more wickets tumbling from the other end as his team went down to 50/6 but the skipper stood tall. Just like the times when Dhoni used to play saviour knocks for the Indian team, Rizvi held one end up and kept the scoreboard moving.
He mixed aggression with caution to make 89 from 59 deliveries, a knock filled with eight fours and six sixes. He got out on the second last ball of the 19th over when the team was on 148 but carried Kanpur pretty well. The team eventually posted 156 and then went on to defend the total by a very close margin.
Lucknow gave a tough fight but were restricted to 153/9 in their 20 overs. Captain Priyam Garg was the top-scorer with 31 runs from 23 balls, while opener Samarth Singh made 29 from 13.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Vipraj Nigam partnered for 30 runs for the final wicket but the two could not take the team over the line.
Lucknow Falcons squad:
Ali Zafar, Kamil Khan, Parth Palawat, Priyam Garg, Samarth Singh, Sameer Choudhary, Shubhang Raj, Abhay Chauhan, Akshu Bajwa, Kritagya Singh, Mohd Shibli, Navneet, Vipraj Nigam, Aaradhya Yadav (Wk), Kirtivardhan Upadhyay (Wk), Pranjal Saini (Wk), Abhinandan Singh, Aditya Kumar Singh, Ankur Chauhan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harsh Tyagi, Kartikeya Jaiswal, Kishan Kumar Singh, Parv Singh, Prashant Chaudhary
Kanpur Superstars squad:
Adarsh Singh, Kuldeep Kumar, Mukesh Kumar, Osho Mohan, Sameer Rizvi, Sudhanshu Sonkar, Sumit Agarwal, Yuvraj Pandey, Abhishek Singh Yadav, Ankur Malik, Faiz Ahmed, Mohammed Aashiyan, Saubhagya Mishra, Shaurya Singh, Inzaman Hussain (Wk), Shoaib Siddiqui (Wk), Aaqib Khan, Asif Ali, Mohsin Khan, Nadeem, Pankaj Kumar, Rishabh Rajput, Shubham Mishra, Vineet Panwar
