Rana the Crowd Favourite
Tassie Tigers
To attract big name players to the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, Cricket Australia gave each team an extra $50,000 and each state was allowed to recruit up to two foreign players.
Tasmania’s first player was Sri Lanka fast bowler Lasith Malinga who then pulled out due to commitments to his national side. Malinga was then replaced by England all-rounder Dimitri Mascarenhas, who then also had to withdraw due to a right knee meniscus tear.
Then with only weeks to the first KFC Twenty20 Big Bash game, David Boon (General Manager – Tasmanian Cricket Operations) recruited Rana Naved-ul-Hasan.
Rana Naved-ul-Hasan is a fast medium bowler who plays for Pakistan, Yorkshire County Cricket Club & now the Tigers in their tilt at the KFC Twenty20 big bash. He has never made huge in-roads into his national side and now holds a ‘C’ grade contract.
In Tasmania’s second game of the series, Rana (or Torana as parts of the wet area were calling him) stood up as the match winner & in doing so stamped himself as a cult hero to the Bellerive crowd.
His night started out by scoring a quick fire 47 from 27 balls in a very important partnership with Travis Birt, that gave Tasmania a defendable score of 167, after a poor start by our top order.
He then followed this up with his bowling at the death by claiming three wickets (Porter, Noffke & Doropoulos). Getting the crowd going with his excitement after every wicket, he eventually had the crowd cheering his name with every delivery. After one wicket he even sprinted within 30 meters of the packed hill to celebrate.
He was also involved in two run outs. Getting Mitch Marsh after the ball was hit back down the pitch and rebounding off his hands and the winning wicket, when in his desperation to win the ball collided with the Warrior batsman, but held it together to lob the ball over the batsman’s head to run him out.
After the game Rana said of the Bellerive crowd:
I love it very much.They are very nice guys. Nice crowd. Lovely people here. I’d be glad to come over here again, inshallah. I have no word for that. I’m very happy
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