Nicholas Pooran smashed a half-century in MI New York’s dominant win
Kieron Pollard led MI New York beat the Washington Freedom in Major League Cricket by eight wickets to inch closer to the playoffs. MI New York won the toss and opted to bowl first in a must-win match and were off to a good start as the Freedom lost their first three wickets with 57 runs on the board which included the wickets the inform batters of the team in Shot, Gous, and Mukhtar Ahmed. David Weise who came into the team in place of Kagiso Rabada made an instant impact by picking up the wicket of Mathew Shot and by also taking a good low diving catch to dismiss wicketkeeper Andries Gous who was looking in good form but was dismissed after scoring 20 off 15 balls.
The Recovery
Having lost three quick wickets Freedom were in desperate need of a partnership between the captain Henriques and Glen Phillips. The duo added 72 runs for the fourth wicket before Henriques was caught in the deep by Tim David on the bowling of Pollard who contributed immensely with the ball by picking up two wickets in the innings. The dismissal of Henriques was soon followed by Glen Phillips who was looking set to get a big score but he threw his wicket away on the team score of 142 which meant that Freedom ended up 15-20 runs short of where they would like to be at the end of 20 overs as they could only score 160 for 5 courtesy some lusty blows from Marco Jenson in the last over of the innings. It was a good bowling performance from the bowlers of MI New York as they picked up wickets at regular intervals at the end of the innings.
The Domination
Chasing 161 to win MI New York got off to a good start as the openers Shayan Jahangir and Monak Patel added 67 for the first wicket in just seven overs which laid a platform for the other batters to capitalize on. They did so after Monak Patel was dismissed after the powerplay. In walked Nicholas Pooran to bat at number three and kept the pressure on the freedom bowlers by playing attacking cricket from the start of his innings which did not give any chance to the Washington Freedom to come back in the match as MI New York registered an important win.
