ABU DHABI – Chris Gayle put in an­oth­er un­beat­en knock for Team Abu Dhabi on Sun­day, to help his team to its sixth win of the Abu Dhabi T10 League and in­to the play­offs.

His 30 not out, off 16 balls, a game-chang­ing over with the ball from cap­tain Liam Liv­ing­stone, and a sen­sa­tion­al 15-ball half-cen­tu­ry – the fastest this sea­son – by open­er Philip Salt saw Team Abu Dhabi beat­ing Chen­nai Braves by sev­en wick­ets at the Za­yed Crick­et Sta­di­um in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

Gayle’s knock in­clud­ed fours and two six­es.

Liv­ing­stone had opt­ed to bowl first af­ter win­ning the toss, and Jamie Over­ton re­moved Braves’ Bhanu­ka Ra­japak­sa ear­ly. How­ev­er, Mo­ham­mad Shahzad (53 off 30 balls), Chen­nai Braves’ oth­er open­er, and Da­sun Shana­ka (11 off 11 balls) stead­ied the ship.

With Braves cruis­ing at 75/1 af­ter sev­en overs, Team Abu Dhabi need­ed a break­through and they got just that, and more, cour­tesy Liv­ing­stone in the eighth over.

The part-time spin­ner dealt the Braves a triple blow, re­mov­ing Shana­ka and Sami­ul­lah Shin­wari in con­sec­u­tive de­liv­er­ies to start his over. The cap­tain capped off the game-turn­ing over with Shahzad’s scalp in the fi­nal de­liv­ery to re­duce the Braves to 82/4.

The An­ge­lo Per­era-led Chen­nai Braves could not re­cov­er from there on as their in­nings wrapped up for 107/6 in their al­lot­ted 10 overs.

Need­ing a sol­id bowl­ing per­for­mance to de­fend their to­tal, they man­aged to get ear­ly wick­ets as Mark Deyal sent back Paul Stir­ling and Liv­ing­stone in the sec­ond over.

Wick­et­keep­er-bats­man Salt, how­ev­er, was in mes­meris­ing form at the oth­er end. The Team Abu Dhabi open­er scored a 15-ball half-cen­tu­ry en route to 63 off just 20 balls. Nuwan Pradeep faced the full wrath of Salt’s heavy-hit­ting, con­ced­ing 46 in his two overs.

Cur­tis Cam­pher fi­nal­ly re­moved Salt from the crease, but Gayle, who had scored an un­beat­en 52 in his side’s pre­vi­ous match, and Col­in In­gram (8 off 3 balls) made sure Team Abu Dhabi crossed the fin­ish line with three overs and sev­en wick­ets to spare.

The win over the bot­tom-placed Braves took Team Abu Dhabi to 12 points from eight match­es and sealed their spot in the play­offs. Al­though they are on the same points as De­can Glad­i­a­tors, they are now in sec­ond place in the stand­ings, based on net run rate.

Along with Team Abu Dhabi and Dec­can Glad­i­a­tors, Bangla Tigers and Del­hi Bulls were con­firmed for the play­offs af­ter Sun­day’s match­es.

CMC