Livingstone’s fireworks help Abu Dhabi Knight Riders sink Sharjah Warriorz by 39 runs
Sharjah (PTI): Liam Livingstone lit up the Sharjah Cricket Stadium with a rampant 82-run blitz off 38 deliveries as Abu Dhabi Knight Riders claimed a 39-run win over Sharjah Warriorz in their opening fixture of the World ILT20.
His explosive finish propelled the Knight Riders to 233/4, the second highest total in the League's history.
Livingstone found support from Sherfane Rutherford (45 off 27) through the middle overs, while Alex Hales (32 off 19) and Alishan Sharafu (34 off 23) provided a brisk start at the top of the innings.
Livingstone reserved his fiercest hitting for the final over, when he hammered five sixes, including four in a row, for a record of 33 runs against Dwayne Pretorius.
Adil Rashid was the lone bright spot for the Warriorz, returning figures of 2/31.
Chasing the formidable target, the Warriorz could not find the start they needed. They lost Johnson Charles (10 off 9 balls), Tom Abell (6 off 6) and Tom Kohler-Cadmore (14 off 18) inside the first seven overs with only 56 runs on board.
Tim David (60 off 24) scripted the fightback. David hit Piyush Chawla for three consecutive sixes in the ninth over to keep the home side in the fray. While the wickets of Sikandar Raza (8 off 11) and Dinesh Karthik (5 off 4) tumbled around him, David surged to a rapid fifty in 21 balls, striking six sixes on his way there.
Ajay Kumar put an end to the onslaught, dismissing David in the 13th over to bring the score to 120/6.
With the required run-rate surging to almost 20 runs in the final five overs, the equation proved too steep.
Pretorius (39 off 20 balls) shepherded the tail with a gutsy knock, comprising four fours and two sixes, while Adil Rashid (25 off 11) played a consolatory cameo with three sixes to take down Andre Russell for 25 runs in the penultimate over.
However, the Warriorz finished considerably short at 194/9.
Earlier, Michael Pepper (15 off 9) set the tone for the Knight Riders’ innings with three boundaries in the first over before he was cleaned up by Pretorius in the third over.
Hales and Alishan Sharafu cracked multiple boundaries as Knight Riders finished the powerplay at 58/1.
The partnership was worth 51 runs when Adil Rashid broke through. Rashid first castled Hales in the eighth over and then removed Sharafu to leave the Knight Riders at 88/3 in ten overs.
Livingstone and Rutherford then seized control of the innings with a 95-run stand.
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Padikkal's maiden double, Ravichandran ton propel Karnataka to 689/6
Lucknow (PTI): Skipper Devdutt Padikkal led from the front with a maiden double hundred in first-class cricket as a dominant Karnataka posted an imposing 689 for six, compounding Uttarakhand's misery in their Ranji Trophy semifinal here on Monday.
On another fruitful day for the Karnataka batters, Ravichandran Smaran too helped himself to a fluent century, scoring an unbeaten 121 off 191 balls with the help of 11 boundaries.
Padikkal made a monumental 232 off 330 balls, striking 29 fours and three sixes during his long vigil at the crease.
Resuming at their overnight total of 355 for two, Karnataka started the second's play from where it had left on first evening, with the duo of Padikkal and Karun Nair (60 off 105 balls) stitching together a partnership of 129 runs for the third wicket to continue their team's domination.
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Uttarakhand tasted the day's first success when medium pacer Abhay Negi dismissed Karun with a back of a length delivery that angled away, and the nick was taken by wicketkeeper Saurabh Rawat.
Padikkal, who began the day at 148 not out, continued to play confidently and reached his first-ever double century in 288 balls, with Smaran too looking good at the other end.
However, having added 59 runs with Smaran, Padikkal tried to work a turning Lakshya Raichandani delivery towards fine-leg but only ended up edging it to Rawat behind the stumps, bringing to an end his long stay in the middle amid a round of applause and acknowledgement.
Shreyas Gopal was on his way back for a duck after facing just six, bowled by Aditya Rawat as Uttarakhand seemed to have finally found an opening to get to the Karnataka lower-order at 485 for five.
However, after his captain's dismissal, Smaran found an able ally in wicketkeeper Kruthik Krishna, with whom the the 22-year-old explosive batter added 123 runs for the sixth wicket to further frustrate Uttarakhand.
Krishna's contribution in the stand was a handsome 60 off 103 balls, and his knock was laced with six fours and a six at the Ekana Cricket Stadium.
Off-spinner Avneesh Sudha broke the stand when the ball took a deflection off Krishna's bat to crash on to his stumps after the batter tries to defend it.
Uttarakhand's agony did not end there though, as seamer Vidyadhar Patil (35 batting off 103 balls) too chipped in with the bat, while adding 81 runs in an unbroken seventh-wicket partnership with Smaran.
On the first day, India's Test and ODI specialist KL Rahul (141), in the company of Padikkal, set the tone for Karnataka with a magnificent hundred.
