5 best non-IPL teams in CLT20 history
The Champions League T20 (CLT20) tournament, as the name suggests, should ideally be considered the biggest T20 event in cricket today, given that it pits champions from various regional T20 leagues against each other, in a bid to determine the ultimate champion. However, for a variety of reasons, the CLT20 has not yet established itself as a premier event, and wanes in comparison to its football namesake, which, in all fairness, has been around much longer.The CLT20 has often been criticized for being a sideshow for the Indian Premier League (IPL) teams, given their dominant show across most editions of the league. While this is true for the 2013 and 2014 (currently ongoing) editions, the initial years of the marquee tournament witnessed an even tussle between the Indian and overseas teams, with the latter dominating on several occasions.This slideshow examines the strongest non-IPL teams who have graced the CL T20 tournament over the years, who not only ran the IPL teams close, but also overcame them many times.
#5 Highveld Lions (2012)
The Highveld Lions stamped their pedigree on the 2012 edition from the onset, by completely outclassing IPL heavyweights Mumbai Indians (MI) in their opening fixture. After being put into bat, the MI batsmen were all at sea against the experienced new ball pair of Sohail Tanvir and Dirk Nannes. To make matters worse, the batsmen struggled to handle the Lions’ left arm spinner, Aaron Phangiso, a largely unknown element at that time.
MI did manage to scramble along to 157, a respectable total for a team possessing bowlers like Mitchell Johnson, Lasith Malinga, Harbhajan Singh and Pragyan Ojha. However, what followed was a master-class in batting by veteran Neil McKenzie and a fresh faced wicketkeeper-batsman no one had much knowledge of back then - Quinton de Kock, to achieve the target losing only 2 wickets, with several deliveries to spare.
The Lions’ appetite for IPL teams was not satiated – they next took on the most consistent team in the history of the Indian league, CSK, and beat them comfortably by 6 wickets, with 3 balls to spare. The South Africans found a new hero in Gulam Bodi, who continued to be their batting mainstay, scoring more than 200 runs in the tournament, while Phangiso easily out-bowled CSK stalwarts Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
In their only blemish during the qualifying stages, Phangiso’s fantastic spell of 3-14 off his 4 overs was not enough for the Lions to overcome the Sydney Sixers, arguably the strongest team in the history of CLT20. After easing past Yorkshire, the Lions feasted on their third IPL prey in the tournament, Delhi Daredevils, in the semi-finals. While the South Africans were restricted to only 139 by a disciplined Delhi attack, their bowlers, led by Phangiso, still managed to stop the star-studded batting line-up of the IPL team, which included David Warner, Virender Sehwag, Kevin Pieterson and Ross Taylor, 22 runs short.
The Lions however, lost the plot in the final; their batsmen collapsed to 9-4 before a middle-order consolidation effort saw them crawl to a score of 121. It was no match for the rampaging Sixers, who achieved the target in 12.3 overs without losing a single wicket, in one of the most one-sided finals in the history of the tournament.