Salman Butt And Kamran Akmal Share Highest Opening Stand In T20s
Nov 25, 2017 at 12:29 PM
Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt has once again grabbed the headlines and this time for all the right reasons as he was involved in a record-breaking opening partnership in the T20 format with his ex-Pakistani teammate Kamran Akmal. Playing for Lahore Whites, the opening duo shared an unbeaten partnership of 209 against Islamabad in the ongoing National T20, thus bettering the previous record stand of 207 set by Kent’s openers Joe Denly and Daniel Bell-Drummond against Essex at Chelmsford in the Natwest T20 Blast earlier this year in August.
Akmal was the aggressive partner during the stand, scoring the bulk of the runs as he slammed 150 off just 71 balls with the help 14 fours and 12 sixes. On the other end, Butt, while seeing that his partner was going great guns, rightly decided to play second fiddle and played a matured knock of 55 runs from 49 balls with eight boundaries. Courtesy of the huge stand, none of the other players, got a chance to bat as the Lahore-based outfit set up a huge target of 210. The duo spared not a single bowler with Pakistan pacer Mohammad Irfan bearing the maximum brunt as he was hit for 48 runs from his quota of four overs.
In reply, Islamabad never looked in contention to chase down the humongous total and were all out for a paltry 100 with none of their batsmen managing to cross the 20-run mark.
Meanwhile, the 209-run stand is the third-highest partnership in T20 history. The first two spots are held by Royal Challengers Bangalore duo Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers who had shared partnerships of 229 and 215* in the Indian Premier League.
Top 10 opening partnerships in T20:
Partners | Runs | Match Date |
S Butt, K Akmal | 209* | 24 Nov 2017 |
JL Denly, DJ Bell-Drummond | 207 | 17 Aug 2017 |
PJ Ingram, JM How | 201 | 18 Jan 2012 |
L Vincent, Shahriar Nafees | 197* | 24 Jan 2013 |
KJ O’Brien, HJH Marshall | 192 | 26 Jun 2011 |
DJ Malan, PR Stirling | 187 | 29 May 2015 |
JJ Roy, AJ Finch | 187 | 29 Jul 2016 |
G Gambhir, CA Lynn | 184* | 7 Apr 2017 |
Tamim Iqbal, Kamran Akmal | 176 | 12 Aug 2012 |
VS Solanki, GA Hick | 175 | 29 Jun 2007 |
The record for opening wicket in T20 internationals is held by Indian openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan who had added 158 runs against New Zealand in the opening T20 in New Delhi this past month.