Lewis helps Dhaka scale their highest BPL chase

Dhaka Dynamites 191 for 3 (Lewis 75, Denly 44) beat Chittagong Vikings 187 for 5 (Anamul 73, Ronchi 59) by seven wickets
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Dhaka Dynamites scaled their biggest chase in the BPL to beat hosts Chittagong Vikings by seven wickets. They chased down 187 with seven balls to spare, comfortably beating their previous highest successful chase of 157 that they achieved earlier in the season. The win took Dhaka to 11 points as they level with toppers Khulna Titans, while Chittagong remained rooted to the bottom.

Evin Lewis, whose strike rate of 241.93 is the highest for any score equal to or above 75 in BPL history, set up the chase. His 31-ball 75 in combination with Joe Denly's sparkling strokeplay that yielded 44 off 39 balls helped get ahead of the asking rate. They were so far ahead that their dismissals hardly caused any flutter for Dhaka. Cameron Delport blasted three sixes in his unbeaten 24-ball 43 to complete the win.

Earlier, Anamul Haque and Luke Ronchi struck fifties as Dhaka conceded 187, their highest this season. Anamul hit six sixes in his 47-ball 73, the most he's ever hit in a T20 innings, while Ronchi, the captain, struck four sixes. Towards the end, it was Sikandar Raza's unbeaten 11-ball 26 that helped them offset the damage done by Sunil Narine. The West Indian didn't pick as many wickets as he would've liked, but stemmed the run flow by bowling 14 dots in his four-over spell, finishing with figures of 1 for 11.

Narine struck early when Soumya Sarkar was bowled attempting a slog sweep. But Ronchi struck two fours and a six off Shakib's second over that went for 23 as Chittagong recovered from their early loss. He was helped along the way by Anamul, who found his hitting range right from the outset, an inside-out six to get off the mark laying down the marker. Ronchi got to his second fifty and the partnership with Anamul had swelled to 107 before he was out trying to clear the infield. By then, he'd made 59 off 40 balls.

By then, Anamul was in control but he was guilty of triggering Stiaan van Zyl's run out in the 16th over when he initially called for the run, only to turn his back. As if the pressure to hit out started to tell, Anamul was out in the 18th over when he holed out to deep square leg.

Shahid Afridi's first-over dismissal may have been a body blow most time, but the attack that was to follow leftmost, and Chittagong for sure, speechless. Lewis bashed Raza and Al Amin for four sixes over backward square-leg and long-off while Joe Denly picked up Rayad Emrit with a nice flick for his first six, which seemed to have come as a follow up to three sparkling boundaries. At the end of the eighth over, however, Dhaka still had to bat at 10.16 required run-rate in the last 12 overs. That was about to fall significantly.

Lewis lifted Sunzmaul Islam's first ball over square-leg before the next two balls went high over long-on. Three balls, three sixes. Chants were on for a fourth, even if it was against the home team. But he mistimed a flat hit to deep square. Having got back the strike in the last ball of the over, he slammed it to the midwicket boundary to get 26 runs from the over. With the third six, Lewis reached his third fifty this season, this one ame off just off 24 balls.

Lewis struck two more sixes to bring his total to nine, before being caught at deep point off Emrit in the 12th over. It ended their 118-run second wicket stand but when Denly too fell in the following over, Dhaka were facing a hold up. But Cameron Delport maintained the scoring rate by hitting a six an over off Raza, Tanbir Hayder and Soumya to convert a potentially tricky chase into a cakewalk.