Toronto Nationals Begin With Smashing Win

This is a T20 competition that we’ve been looking forward to for months now, with some of the world’s top professional cricketers making their way to Canada to be a part of the inaugural Global T20 Canada – the first professional T20 league in North America and a move which will guarantee an improvement in the cricket scenario in Canada. For more on the tournament and quotes from top cricketers, click here.

Yesterday marked the first match of the 2018 Global T20 Canada, between Vancouver Knights and Toronto Nationals. Both teams had star studded line ups, led by Chris Gayle and Daren Sammy respectively. In this historic first game, Sammy won the toss for the Nationals and elected to field first. The game was played at the Maple Leaf Ground in King City, where all the matches of this league will be played.

What followed was an absolute run fest. We’ve watched a few matches in the USA before and have witnessed high scoring games, and this first game in Canada was no different, with the Knights putting up a massive 227/4 in their 20 overs. The West Indians were in action early on, with Evin Lewis smashing his way to 96(55), before Andre Russell provided the fireworks at the rear-end, scoring 54(20).

It wasn’t going to be an easy day for the bowlers, and they were all smashed around the park, except young Canadian mystery bowler, Nikhil Dutta. He finished with magical figures of 2/26, including the wicket of the big fish Chris Gayle. His team then had to go out, chase down the target and not let his efforts go in vain.

They did precisely that, did Toronto Nationals. You don’t generally such high scores being chased down in T20s, let alone with such ease, as the Nationals won by 6 wickets and 4 balls to spare. Steven Smith played an important innings of 61(41), while New Zealand’s Anton Devcich went berserk in the middle overs, taking the game away from the Knights.

Devcich scored 92(44)* in an innings that rightly won him the Man of the Match award, while captain Sammy came in and guided his team to victory, finishing the inaugural GT20 Canada match off with a six over long on. With such an exciting first game, we can’t wait to see what’s to come in this inaugural Global T20 Canada!

Toronto Nationals Begin With Smashing Win

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