In an absolute thriller, Tamil Nadu's Shahrukh Khan creamed a six with five needed off the final ball to give his team to retain the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy after defeating Karnataka in the finals at Arun Jaitley Stadium here on Monday.
As many as 16 runs were needed from the last over of Prateek Jain. Sai Kishore got a streaky boundary and managed to scramble for a single to give strike to Shahrukh. Two more runs were added to Tamil Nadu score after Prateek sent down two wide balls on the leg side.
Needing five runs of the final ball, Shahrukh positioned himself for a leggish ball and creamed a lofted flick for a six, registering a memorable win for Tamil Nadu.
The cricket fraternity congratulated Tamil Nadu on their second consecutive title win. Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK) also took to Twitter and shared a picture of their captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni enjoying the SMAT final between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
"Fini See ing off in sty7e! #SyedMushtaqAliTrophy #WhistlePodu," tweeted CSK.
Moments after the tweet, twitter users began speculating Shahrukh's possible inclusion in the Chennai team for the IPL’s next season. Check out some of the reactions:
Earlier, Karnataka too had a see-sawing through the innings with their lower order largely responsible for the total going past 150. Karnataka lost three wickets of Kadam Kadam, Karun Nair and Manish Pandey in five overs.
Abhinav Manohar and BR Sharath rebuilt the innings with a 55-run stand for the fourth wicket. This laid the platform for J Suchith and Praveen Dubey to add 41 in just 19 balls at the back-end to take Karnataka to a total that kept them in the game, until Shahrukh blew their hopes away.
Brief Scores: Karnataka 151/7 (Abhinav Manohar 46; R Sai Kishore 3-12) lost to Tamil Nadu153/6 (N Jagadeesan 41, Shahrukh Khan 33*) by 4 wickets. (Inputs from UNI)
