ESPNcricinfo Awards Men's T20 leagues batting winner: NickyP lights up MLC

In its very first year, MLC could not have asked for a better advertisement than Nicholas Pooran's berserker turn to give the MI franchise their ninth title in ten T20 tournament finals.

MI New York's run in the tournament had been fairly unremarkable - they won two of their five league games and squeaked into the qualifiers on net run rate - but it wasn't for any fault of Pooran's. On the way to the final, in seven games he'd only been dismissed for a single-digit score once. His highest score before the title match was a reminder of the destruction he could unleash when in the zone - 42 runs of his 68 in a loss to Seattle Orcas came from sixes alone.

Put in to bat in the final, Seattle made 183. Only once in the tournament had a higher score been chased down, and that was by Seattle against New York. New York had an early wobble when they lost Steve Taylor to the third ball of the innings, but stand-in captain Pooran lashed Imad Wasim for two sixes to end the over. Worse was in store for Dwaine Pretorius, whose first ball was swatted over long-on for a six, followed by another 102-metre maximum on the next. A four and another six followed. Pretorius slowed down the fifth ball to try and stem the flow but Pooran bided his time to ease it past short fine leg for four.

Pooran got to his fifty in the fourth over, belting Cameron Gannon for a four and a six that took him to the mark in 16 balls, the fastest fifty of the tournament. Andrew Tye was the next in line for the treatment, dispatched for three huge sixes in the sixth over. By the end of the powerplay, MI New York had 80 runs on the board, 69 of those contributed by Pooran.

He slowed a touch, taking nine balls to get from 90 to 100, but shortly after bringing up his hundred, he slipped back into carnage mode, picking Harmeet Singh as his next target and smashing three consecutive sixes off him in the 15th over. Six balls later it was all over, Pooran falling over in dramatic fashion nutmegging a yorker past short fine leg to the boundary for the win.

While Pooran had made his intent clear on the first three balls he faced, he drove - and swatted, heaved, lofted and pumped - the point home in Pretorius' first over. No matter where Pretorius bowled, or how, the ball seemed to find the middle of Pooran's bat. Three sixes and two fours came off that over, which went for 28. Pretorius would finish with an economy of over 15.

249.09 Pooran's strike rate in the final. Only Heinrich Klaasen struck at a higher rate (250), during his 44-ball 110 not out against New York earlier in the tournament.

118 Runs out of 137 that came off boundaries alone, with Pooran blitzing 13 sixes and ten fours

"There was no way to get him out tonight. That was close to the innings of his life. He was also facing good bowlers too and did it in a pressure situation."
- Kagiso Rabada, Pooran's MI New York team-mate

Tom Curran
67 not out vs Manchester Originals, final, the Hundred
Oval Invincibles were tottering at 34 for 5 after 36 balls when Curran walked in at No. 7, but his unbeaten stand of 127 with Jimmy Neesham, the highest in the history of the men's Hundred, set the side on the path to their first title in the competition. Curran's 67 not out came off just 34 balls - his five sixes included a massive upper cut off Josh Little to get to his fifty. His final six came off the last ball of the innings, lofting Zaman Khan into the groundskeeper's hands after the bowler missed his yorker by a length.