Ben Duckett Stars in Nelson Mandela Victory!

Professional T20 leagues are taking place all over the world these days and every country has a couple of their own leagues in place, with one of the latest to complete being Nepal’s Pokhara Premier League which ended a couple of weeks ago after Pokhara Paltan had a comfortable victory in the final.

Now the latest to kick off is the Mzansi Super League (MSL), which has been formed after a lot of budgetary issues associated with the CSA (Cricket South Africa) Board. We were very skeptical of this league beginning, but it finally kicked off on 16th November 2018, with plenty of local talent you would’ve seen before in the Ram Slam T20, to go with a handful of international T20 superstars.

The six participating teams are franchises representing different regions in South Africa:

Cape Town Blitz
Nelson Mandela Bay Giants
Paarl Rocks
Durban Heat
Jozi Stars
Tshwane Spartans

Yesterday, we witnessed a special innings from England’s Ben Duckett, whose innings at number 3 was a vital one that helped his team Nelson Mandela Bay Giants kick off their MSL T20 campaign on a winning note. After putting their opponents Jozi Stars in to bat first, the Nelson Mandela team did well to restrict the Stars to just 124/7 in their 20 overs.

Giants captain JJ Smuts was the wrecker-in-chief with the ball, picking up 3/20 in his four overs. However, he wasn’t able to reproduce the magic with the bat, getting dismissed for nought, while his opening partner Marco Marais was also sent back for a duck, starting off the chase on a tricky note.

However, in walks English middle order batsman Ben Duckett, and the tables are turned as he plays a brilliant knock that turned the tides in favour of his team. He orchestrated a fantastic innings of 75(45) which included 5 fours and 5 sixes, as the Bay Giants got home with 5 wickets and 2 full overs to spare.

After this aggressive knock in their opening game of the series, everyone will be watching out for him in the MSL T20 2018, while ECB selectors should also have their eyes open as England are suffering without good openers since quite a while now, making it worse after Alastair Cook hung up his boots in September.

Keep reading ReadScoops.com for more updates from the 2018 MSL T20 tournament.

Ben Duckett Stars in Nelson Mandela Bay Giants Victory!

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