By IANS
Hyderabad : Hyderabad Heroes maintained their clean record at home and moved into the final of the Indian Cricket League’s (ICL) Edelweiss 20s Challenge beating defending champions Chennai Superstars by four runs at the Lal Bahadur Stadium here.
For Heroes, Nicky Boje top scored with 47 after skipper Chris Harris won the toss and elected to bat. However, after Boje’s dismissal, done in by a slower one from Thiru Kumaran in the 17th over, the Superstars put up a top class effort in the field and prevented any major onslaught from the Heroes in the last five overs to restrict them to 147/6 in their allotted 20 overs.
In reply, the Superstars came in with their tested explosive combination of Ian Harvey and Ganapathi Vignesh. But the combination did not get off to a good start after Vignesh was sent back by Abdul Razzaq without troubling the scorers. Justin Kemp then castled Harvey in the second over to put the defending champions in deep trouble at 4/2.
At the end of the fourth over the Superstars were placed at 22/2 with Stuart Law and Russel Arnold stuck in the repair act. However with Arnold’s wicket in the very next over the Superstars were tottering at 23/3.
With four overs left, the match was all set to go down to the wire with Superstars needing 43 runs off 24 balls at 10.8 runs per over.
In the last over, the Superstars needed 12 runs with three wickets in hand, but the pendulum swung in favour of the hosts when captain Harris struck in the first two balls of the over to help his side pip Superstars by four runs.
Brief Scores: Hyderabad Heroes 147/6 (Boje 47, Rayudu 25, Syed 1/17). Chennai Superstars 143 all out (Badani 50, Sathish 25, Harris 2/19)