Ranjane, Ferreira and spinners bring TSK back to winning ways
LAKR hardly got going in the chase, as Akeal Hosein and Noor Ahmad shared four wickets
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Jun-2025 • 4 hrs ago
Shubham Ranjane scored a 45-ball 70 • Sportzpics for MLC
Texas Super Kings 196 for 8 (Ranjane 70, Ferreira 43, Smit 38, Russell 3-37, van Schalkwyk 3-51) beat Los Angeles Knight Riders 144 for 7 (Chand 30, Hosein 2-10, Noor 2-27) by 52 runs
Texas Super Kings returned to winning ways and rose to second place on the MLC 2025 points table with an all-round display that brushed Los Angeles Knight Riders aside. It was TSK's fourth win in six games and LAKR's fourth loss in five matches as the tournament reached the halfway mark of its league phase.
The stars of the game for TSK were lower-middle-order batters Shubham Ranjane and Donovan Ferreira and left-arm spinners Akeal Hosein and Noor Ahmad.
LAKR had started well, making good use of their decision to bowl by reducing TSK to 33 for 3 in four overs, all three taken by Shadley van Schalkwyk including the big wicket of Marcus Stoinis for a golden duck.
Opener Smit Patel then resurrected the innings with a steady stand of 64 off 46 with Ranjane, nearly taking the score to 100 when Smit scooped Andre Russell to short fine-leg for 38 off 33. The wicket turned out to be detrimental for LAKR because there was no stopping Ferreira and Ranjane after that. Ferreira started with back-to-back fours off Ali Khan and then went after Russell with 6, 4 and 4. Van Schalkwyk then leaked sixes to both batters in his last over - which went for 23 - as the two put on 82 in just 40 balls. The stand ended in the 19th over after a big mix up led to Ferreira's run out, and Ranjane also fell two balls later. Two more wickets fell in the last over but TSK finished on 196, which proved to be enough.
The LAKR openers had hardly found their feet when Hosein struck twice in two balls, dismissing Nitish Kumar with a spectacular arm ball that swung in sharply to knock over middle stump. Unmukt Chand and Saif Badar struggled to score quickly, taking the team to 39 for 2 in the powerplay, before a cross-seam delivery from Stoinis had Badar edging behind. The asking rate had shot above 12 an over now and never came down as variations from the TSK bowlers - both spinners and fast bowlers - kept LAKR on a leash.
Sherfane Rutherford struggled his way to 13 off 15 before being bowled by Noor, and even the hard-hitting Jamaican duo of Rovman Powell and Russell couldn't turn things around. Powell hit the first six of the innings in the 15th over just before Russell was deceived by a sharp wrong'un from Noor that turned from leg stump with plenty of drift to dislodge his off stump. LAKR now needed 95 from 27 balls and never even got close.