Kerala Knights 126 for 3 (Bairstow 84*) beat Bengal Tigers 123 for 5 by seven wickets
Jonny Bairstow made the most of his brief stopover at the T10 League in Sharjah, smashing a remarkable 84 not from 24 balls as Kerala Knights beat Bengal Tigers by seven wickets with eight balls to spare.
Bairstow, who scored a century on his return to the England Test team against Sri Lanka last week, struck six fours and eight sixes – including three in a row off Aamer Yamin, to set a new record score in the shortest form of the game, beating Mohammad Shahzad’s 74 from 16 balls last week.
Bairstow was striking the ball so cleanly that he would have been odds-on to record the world’s first T10 hundred, but ran out of runs to score, as Kerala hunted down the Tigers’ target of 124 with eight balls to spare.
It was a remarkable arrival in the tournament for Bairstow, who only signed up for the squad three days ago, as he went to join his one-day captain, Eoin Morgan for the closing stages of the competition.
Morgan himself was out for a first-ball duck as Bairstow arrived at crease at 12 for 2 after nine balls. He struck two of his first three balls, from Mohammad Nabi, for four, and didn’t look back, smashing his last fifty runs from 14 balls.
Other England players involved in the competition include Tom Curran, Alex Hales, Jason Roy, Chris Jordan and Liam Plunkett.