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Guyana Amazon Warriors 85 (Forde 28, Immanuel 3-7, Siddle 3-18) beat San Francisco Unicorns 79 (Peake 31, Nabi 3-12, Pretorius 3-24, Tahir 2-16) by six runs
The contest also went into the record books for the lowest match aggregate in a T20 franchise league final. Six other tournament finals have had lower match aggregates, but those were either international tournaments or domestic – club/state/district – tournaments.
In the end, with Unicorns needing seven runs to get past Amazon Warriors’ 85 and ten balls left, last man Callum Stow set off for a quick single after pushing Matthew Forde to mid-off. It was a scramble, but with Shimron Hetmyer knocking down the stumps at the bowler’s end, it was all over.
The game belonged to the bowlers from the get-go after Amazon Warriors opted to bat. Their top five was back in the dugout by 6.2 overs, and of them, Rahmanullah Gurbaz had been the top-scorer with 8. At that point, the scoreboard read 25 for 5 with three of the wickets going to Peter Siddle.
Things didn’t get better for Amazon Warriors till they had Dwaine Pretorius and Forde come together for the ninth wicket with the scoreboard reading 29 for 8. They added 41 runs together and Forde, the No. 10, top-scored with 28 off 23. That did not quite take Amazon Warriors to a defendable-looking total, but anything was better than the 30-odd all out they had been staring at after Anirudh Immanuel had returned incredible figures of 3 for 7 from four overs with his legspin to take over the mantle from Siddle in the middle overs.
Set 86 to win, Unicorns actually got off to a better start than the home side. Pretorius struck twice and Gudakesh Motie once inside three overs to leave them at 28 for 3, but Oliver Peake was playing the innings of the final, dominating the scoring as he partnered Hassan Khan for 22 runs in ten balls for the third wicket.
But run-scoring looked close to impossible when the No. 5, Sanjay Krishnamurthi, was on strike, especially against Mohammad Nabi. Krishnamurthi scored 9 in 24 balls in a stand of 25 with Peake that took 43 balls. There wouldn’t have been alarm bells yet, though, since the target was just around the corner. But Nabi sent back Krishnamurthi and Peake, who scored 31 in 28 balls, in back-to-back overs, the tenth and the 12th, and Imran Tahir struck twice in between, in the 11th, to change the course of the game altogether.
It came down to the last wicket, with 14 to get from 14 balls, and then the run out, which sealed the game, and two GSL titles in three seasons for Amazon Warriors. Pretorius was the undisputed choice for Player of the Match.
