Dubai: The Danube Lions continued to dominate Summer Indoor Tournament at the ICC Academy at Dubai Sports City registering back to back tournament victories. They defeated SFS by 52 runs to win the Summer Indoor Tournament title, after winning the ICC Ramadan Indoor tournament in July.
The Lions restricted SFS to 18, and that was never going to be enough to test a team who have tasted in big match success. Danube cruised home 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 the battle for a total prize money 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 their innings, wickets began to tumble. Matches in the Summer Indoor Tournament were eight-a-side 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 SFS’s innings, and that prevented it from posting a challenging score.
Danube Lions’s 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 action began back in September when a total of 16 teams lined up, divided into four pools of four teams each, with the top two sides in each group going through to the quarter-finals, followed by semi-finals and the Grand Final.
Reflecting on the Grand Final and the tournament as a whole Mudassar Nazar, former Pakistan all-rounder and ICC Academy Head of Development, 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.”
