Toronto Nationals kept their nerves in the dying moment to register their second victory against Montreal Tigers by one wicket at the Maple Leaf North-West Ground.
Batting first, Montreal didn’t have a good start losing their Windian opening pair of Sunil Narine and Dwayne Smith early. As a result, they were reeling at 29 for 2 with four overs. Since then, George Walker and Moises Henriques stitched a brilliant partnership to take the team out of the trouble.
The pair added 127 runs for the third wicket to take their team over the 150-run mark. While Worker rotated the strikes and looked for gaps, Henriques took the attack to the opposition. The Australian looked in brilliant touch hammering the balls all over the park.
On the other hand, Walker played a classic knock piercing the gaps with ease. He struck 8 boundaries on the way of scoring 62 runs, the highest in the team. Henriques departed scoring 50 runs as Montreal posted 176 runs at the halfway mark.
Veteran seamer from Pakistan, Mohammad Sami topped the wicket list with three wickets.
Meanwhile, Toronto had the worst possible start losing their top three batsmen within 27 runs. Skipper Lasith Maling and Peter Siddle did the early damage removing the likes of Steven Smith and Kamran Akmal. Since then, a timely 93-run partnership with Anton Devcich and Nitish Kumar took them closer.
At that juncture, Siddle and Sandeep Lamichhane picked up the respective scalps of Devcich (43) and Nitish (46) to peg Toronto back. Darren Sammy, Navneet Singh, and Usama Mir followed the duo of Nitish and Devcich back to the pavilion in quick succession, with Toronto sliding down to 149 for 8 in the 18th over.
However, Kieron Pollard and Sami combined to smack Narine for a couple of sixes as the equation came down to 13 off six balls. Pollard then went into top gear by clobbering Siddle for a six and a four in the last over.
Just when Toronto seemed to have sealed the deal, there was yet another twist on the tail. Pollard top-edged a skier to Nicholas Kirton to give an opportunity to Montreal. Unfortunately for Montreal, Williams landed the final punch to close the doors on the opposition ranks.
To add more drama, there were a few words exchanged between Williams and Siddle as the latter took his team home.