Danish Cricket Yearbook 2017

n Af Jeremy Bray The 2017 T20 competition was extended in games this year due to the fact people were under the illusion that there would be a T20 European World Cup qualifying competition in the summer. This competition didn’t even- tuate and will be held this coming summer 2018. The winners of the 2017 T20 elite competition were Ishøj, who were to become almost impossible to beat both home and away, especially at Ishøj, which really has be- come a fortress for them. T20 really seems to suit their style of play, as they have some big hitters throughout the side plus combined with some very strong bowling options in both pace and spin department. The wily left arm chinaman spin of Javed Khan, especially at Ishøj, proved a real handful for all teams and again the All-round prowess of Delawar Khan with bat and ball led the way for Ishøjs title winning run. KB and Svanholm would have no doubt gone into this series as strong favorites and would be disappointed at their performances considering the players they have at their disposal. Maybe it was a case of these teams under- estimating the fighting spirit of Ishøj? Who certainly don’t have the player depth KB and Svanholm posses? This made their title win all the more sweet no doubt. AB again found life very tough as did Skanderborg who missed the services of their two best players in national captain Michael Pedersen and Frederik Klokker for pretty much the duration of this tournament. Still Skanderborg should be disappointed with their results as they had enough quality players to make an impact on this tour- nament, but it would have needed high quality consist- ent displays from the likes of Rizwan Mahmood, Anders Bülow and Shangeev Thas. Unfortunately for them these moments of individual brilliance were too few and far in between. Herning was a team I thought that could have pushed for a title bid especially with the dangerous Oliver Hald, Nicolaj Damgaard and Magnus Kristensen in the batting depart- ment, plus they have a very promising spin department led by Nicolaj Damgaard, Jeppe Nielsen, Raizul and Ihyas Saumy. Unfortunately like Skanderborg they couldn’t re- ally produce enough high quality individual performances on a consistent basis. Without doubt the outstanding performance of the T20 tournament came from National player Aftab Ahmed, KB with his blockbusting century of just over 50 balls against AB. Hopefully Aftab can now build on from this century by making more consistent and match winning innings such as this, which everyone knows he is capable of. All in all, well done to Ishøj who thoroughly deserved the title and proved that not just player depth guarantees you a title, but hard work and a never say die attitude goes a long way to being that winning formula. Ishøjs T20 vindere T20 Masser af Ishøj succes i T20 Ups Frederik Klokker (Skanderborg) Jacob Larsen (Herning) med et grænseslag I 9 I DANSK CRICKET ÅRSSKRIFT 20 17