The match between City Kaitak & Hong Kong Island United in progress Cricket Hong Kong Twitter
The match between City Kaitak & Hong Kong Island United in progress Cricket Hong Kong Twitter

City Kaitak beat Hong Kong Island United by 50 runs in match 10 of the Hong Kong T20 Blitz 2017 and have therefore qualified for the final, scheduled to be played a 11.30 AM IST on Sunday. Kaitak will now face defending champions Kowloon Cantons in the final. Kaitak just needed a win under their belt to take them to the final, while United having two matches back-to-back needed to win by a huge margin. The Misbah-ul-Haq-led side eventually succumbed to their third straight defeat and has now crashed out of the tournament. Kowloon Cantons qualify for Hong Kong T20 Blitz 2017 final with 64-run win over Galaxy Gladiators Lantau

For Kaitak, it was Chris Jordan, who top-scored with 34 and chipped in with three wickets, including a maiden, and ended up winning the Man of the Match award. However, Saeed Ajmal finished with figures of 5 for 32, yet ended up on the losing side.

Talking after the match, Jordan said, When you bat first in a crunch game like that it is always good to have a score on the board, not matter what the score is. In the end the scoreboard pressure can always tell and you saw that happen in the end.

This match however saw some drama in the 11th over of HKIU s chase. When Misbah was batting on 17, he was adjudged run out by the square leg umpire. But, it was later noted that the wicketkeeper did not have the ball in hand while knocking over the wickets. Misbah was hence called back, only to be dismissed after adding 10 more runs. His wicket at that stage could have handed Kaitak a much easier win, but they will be happy with the result they got at the end of the day.

Talking about the controversy surrounding Misbah s run out, Jordan said, The ball came in from the boundary, the stumps were dislodged and the umpire gave him out. Obviously he saw it fit to turn his decision around. I m always of the opinion that as long as the right decision is made in the end, I m not worried, no matter how they go about it. There was a little bit of confusion, stopped the game for a while, which you don t like to see. But I thought how we bounced back after. We didn t lose our concentration, which was key and I hope we do a little bit of that in the final.

Looking ahead to the final, Jordan is keen on beating the only team that has beaten Kaitak in the tournament so far. They are the only team to beat us so far in the tournament. We are hurting a little bit after that first game in the manner we lost it. We are looking to put right things we did wrong in that game. They have high quality players and on their day they can hurt you. But if we keep their overseas players quiet, we can go a long way in winning the game, said the England all-rounder.

United needed to get 156 inside 17.4 overs to qualify for the final, but they could not do that. Earlier, United won the toss and elected to field first.

Brief Scores:

City Kaitak 155 in 19.4 overs (Gareth Harte 22, Chris Jordan 34; Saeed Ajmal 5 for 32, Tanwir Afzal 2 for 17) beat Hong Kong Island United 105 in 15 overs (Ian Bell 41, Misbah-ul-Haq 27; Chris Jordan 3 for 16, Aizaz Khan 3 for 25) by 50 runs.

Man of the Match: Chris Jordan