Kieron Pollard Surpasses 900 T20 Sixes, Second Only to Chris Gayle

England batter Alex Hales sets a new record smashing knock of 67 off just 32 balls for the Desert Vipers against the Dubai Capitals in the qualifier 1 at Dubai in the ILT 20 Cricket tournament today. Hales moved to the second spot in the list surpassing West Indian and Mumbai Indians player, Kieron Pollard.

The 36-year-old opener boasts of 13,558 runs in 492 T20 matches with an average of 30.06 and 7 hundreds, 85 fifties at the strike-rate of 145.23. Till the middle of the year 2004, Pollard played 617 innings cumulatively and was able to make 13,537 runs.

Hales is trailing close behind the West Indies legendary opener Chris Gayle’s tally of 14562 at the rate of 32.00 runs per innings who has played 455 innings in his career. Shoaib Malik—Pakistan’s all-rounder Sir, scored 13492 and former Australian top order batsman David Warner scored 12909 runs.

Kohli who used to be the captain of Indian cricket team has scored 12886 runs in the format of T20. Among them, Kohli alone had accumulated 4188 runs in the T20 international before bidding adieu to the format after the T20 world cup – 2024 earlier last year.

The last Wednesday saw Dubai Capitals emerging as the winner of a stunning last-ball and headed straight to the final of the ILT20 Season 3. In a classic climax to the match to be held at the Dubai international stadium, the best all-round performance from the captain Gulbadin Naib that included the third consecutive half-century against Vipers, further fortified with two wickets enabled the Capitals to clinch a five-wicket victory. The victory was also the second highest successful chase of targets in T20s there and also anSA Capitals had thus registered fifth consecutive win over the Vipers.

In the earlier part of the innings, Hales scored a scintillating 67 of a mere 32 balls and set the platform for the Vipers getting a commendable 98 run partnership with Max Holden. Nevertheless, the Capitals came back strongly with the ball and managed to give the Vipers only 189/7, thus making it effectively competitive in the field.

This is true especially in the pressure of a playoff that had seen the Dubai Capitals score a steep target powerplay of 47 runs with no loss of wickets. With 17 off those first four deliveries of the fifth over, from Sam Curran, Adam Rossington made it clear that he was out to attack, but the Capitals were already not meeting the equation. Shai Hope on the other hand only scored a run a ball seventeen before he was bowled by Wanindu Hasaranga in the seventh over.

In the first innings, UAE’s Farhan Khan had the early scalp of Rahmanullah Gurbaz and gave the Capitals a breakthrough as soon as the first over was done. The control was in the hand of Vipers thereon as Alex Hales and Max Holden took the team to 64/1 in six overs. Especially effective was Hales, who was dismissed in the fifth over. The same over would see 14 runs as the last one proved to be expensive due to the error.

Hales then went on to hit Sikandar Raza for two sixes in the seventh over as he reached his fifty of 28 balls. The right-handed batsman accomplished the feat to the tune of seven fours and thrice took the ropes in the DP World ILT20 for the ninth time.

Thus, Dubai Capitals denied the Vipers attempts to surge ahead and give them a hard lesson. The first seven overs had scored 84 runs; however, in the next seven overs, wickets were falling and only 45 runs could be scored due to good bowling from Haider Ali and Qais Ahmad.

This match comes out as the eliminator match of the tournament where MI Emirates will play against Sharjah Warriorz. The winner of the encounter will meet Dubai Capitals to determine the winner of the Knockout match.