Dubai: The Danube Lions continued to dominate the Summer Indoor Tournament at the ICC Academy at Dubai Sports City registering back-to-back victories at the tournament. The Lions beat SFS by 52 runs to claim another trophy and prove their dominance in this format.
The Lions smothered their opponents in the grand final, restricting SFS to a total of 18, which was never going to be enough to test a team schooled in big-match success. The Lions cruised home, finishing with a total of 70 to seal victory with plenty to spare.
The match was the culmination of another superb tournament, with 16 sides doing battle for a total of Dh5,000 in prize money and the trophy, supplied by Crystal Gallery.
For SFS, the writing was on the wall when, after a promising beginning that yielded a total of 31 at the halfway stage of its innings, wickets started to tumble.
Matches in the tournament were eight-a-side contests with each innings lasting 12 overs. Players batted in pairs, each for three overs, with a team losing five runs every time a wicket fell.
A total of eight wickets went down in the last six overs of the SFS innings and it prevented them from posting a challenging score.
Danube Lions’ Mendis was named player of the match for an excellent all-round contribution that saw him score 15 and take two wickets for minus two runs.
The tournament began on September 21 with a total of 16 teams divided into four pools lining up. The top two sides in each group went through to the quarter-finals, followed by the semi-finals and the grand final.
Reflecting on the grand final and the tournament as a whole, ICC Academy Head of Development Mudassar Nazar, the former Pakistan all-rounder, said: “Congratulations to Danube Lions for a superb display once again. They went through the entire tournament unbeaten and its players have once again set a standard that other teams must aspire to. SFS can draw great encouragement from the performance of its players too and it has been a superb event and one that has been a credit to all the players involved. The standard of indoor cricket in the UAE is going up and up and we look forward to further events in the future.”
