Trinidad & Tobago 171 for 6 (Pollard 54, Ramdin 23) New South Wales 170 for 4 ( Hughes 83, Warner 63) by four wickets
It's said that you can win or lose a Twenty20 game in a blink and Kieron Pollard, batting like a man possessed, proved the adage right by engineering a stunning win against New South Wales.'It's not over until it's over' is another of those cricketing clichés that is not always held to account but tonight was the night for clichés - in a Hyderabad minute, everything changed. NSW unleashed their two dynamites, David Warner and Phillip Hughes, who propelled them to 170, which seemed more than enough at one stage but Pollard, with a violent 18-ball 54, crafted a remarkable comeback in Twenty20 history.The chase never seemed to be going anywhere after the top order had combusted and when Darren Bravo was run out, the equation read: 80 from 42 balls. Game over, surely? But everything changed in stunning fashion as first Denesh Ramdin and then Pollard played out of their skins to turn the game on its head
It all began in the 14th over, bowled by Stuart Clark. Ramdin pinged the midwicket boundary twice before he lifted the spinner Steven Smith in the next over for a boundary over extra-cover and a slog-swept six over midwicket. However, Ramdin fell in the next over and once again, NSW were the favourites or so one thought.If it started in the 14th over, the game-breaker was the 17th over in which Pollard simply went berserk against the medium-pace of Moises Henriques and looted 27 runs. The second ball disappeared to long-off, the third was sliced over point, the fourth, a full toss, was collected by a spectator beyond midwicket boundary, the next, another nervy full toss, was picked up from behind deep square-leg boundary, and the last delivery flew to third man. Game almost over.
If there was any doubt, it vanished when Simon Katich handed Henriques the responsibility of bowling the 19th over and Pollard finished off the chase with a couple of bludgeoned sixes.
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