Azhar Mahmood seals dramatic win for Surrey with a last-ball six

Azhar Mahmood punches the air in delight after his last-ball six clinched victory for Surrey

Former Pakistan all-rounder Azhar Mahmood pulled the last ball of the match deep over square leg to hand Surrey a sensational four wicket victory over Gloucestershire in the NatWest T20 Blast clash on Tuesday. The 40-year-old made good use of his experience to smash fast bowler Craig Miles into the crowd to chase down Gloucestershire’s 154/5.

Speaking after the match, Mahmood said: “I knew when I connected that it would be six. I had missed the previous ball, which was also short, and I thought the last one would also be short. “

“The delay between the last two balls helped me because I had a little bit more time to get myself calm and collected”.

Earlier in the day, Hamish Marshall and Ian Cockbain played quick fire knocks to propel the visitors to a good start,following Klinger’s early dismissal. The best partnership of the innings was the 62 run stand between Geraint Jones and Peter Handscomb, but they were restricted in their scoring pace towards the latter part of the innings by the Surrey bowlers. Four Gloucestershire managed to get into the 30s, but none of them were able to carry on and play a big innings.

Matt Dunn was the pick of the Surrey bowlers dismissing the dangerous duo and Klinger and Cockbain. The spinners Gareth Batty and Zafar Ansari also impressed with figures of 1 for 20 and 1 for 27 respectively, from their allotted four overs.

Surrey’s reply started off well after Jason Roy gave the home crowd at Kia Oval plenty to cheer about with a blistering 17-ball 33. Kumar Sangakkara topped the scoring with 33 and was well supported by Ben Foakes who made 26.

But continuing the impressive day out for the spinners were Thomas Smith and Jack Taylor who managed to pull back things with economic figures of 2 for 24 and 1 for 22 respectively.

With Sangakkara and Foakes both being dismissed in quick succession, it was left to Mahmood to finish off the proceedings and he did that just that, in some style too!

The 20-year-old Miles was inconsolable at the end of the match but found support from his skipper Michael Klinger.

“Craig bowled a fantastic last over to get them from wanting nine off six balls to six from the last ball. He also executed exactly what we asked him to do – so there’s no blame on him.”

You can view the six here: