LAUDER­HILL – Shim­ron Het­my­er once again proved to be the dif­fer­ence-mak­er for his Ma­jor League Crick­et fran­chise, the Seat­tle Or­cas, de­liv­er­ing a match-win­ning per­for­mance to down the high-fly­ing San Fran­cis­co Uni­corns by four wick­ets in Flori­da on Tues­day.

The West In­di­an’s blis­ter­ing un­beat­en 78 off 37 balls, stud­ded with four bound­aries and sev­en six­es, guid­ed his team to vic­to­ry with three balls to spare, keep­ing their play­off hopes alive in a tense fin­ish.

On a slug­gish Lauder­hill sur­face, the Uni­corns got off to a sol­id start de­spite los­ing cap­tain Matthew Short ear­ly for two runs.

Jake Fras­er-McGurk with 35 off 18 balls pro­vid­ed ear­ly fire­works, while San­jay Kr­ish­na­murthi with 41 off 30 an­chored the mid­dle overs with ag­gres­sive stroke­play.

Tim Seifert strug­gled for flu­en­cy but held firm to score an un­beat­en 31 as the low­er or­der helped to lift the Uni­corns to 168-5.

Seat­tle’s bowlers, led by Ayan De­sai with 2-32, kept things tight at key mo­ments, with Ger­ald Co­et­zee and Kyle May­ers con­ced­ing just sev­en runs in two ex­cel­lent death overs.

The chase be­gan dis­as­trous­ly for the Or­cas as Xavier Bartlett with 2-24 struck twice in the Pow­er­Play, re­mov­ing Steven Tay­lor for a duck and May­ers for just three.

At 31-2 af­ter six overs, the in­nings need­ed a spark, and Shayan Ja­hangir’s 36 off 22 pro­vid­ed it with a vi­o­lent as­sault on Shep­herd in the eighth over. How­ev­er, his dis­missal along­side cap­tain Sikan­dar Raza for 11 in the 10th over left the Or­cas reel­ing at 70-4.

En­ter Het­my­er, and the left-han­der an­nounced his ar­rival with three six­es in his first sev­en balls, shift­ing mo­men­tum de­ci­sive­ly. De­spite Hein­rich Klaasen falling in the 13th over for 5, Het­my­er kept his cool, ex­pert­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ing the field along­side Aaron Jones, who con­tributed 14 runs.

The equa­tion tight­ened with 55 need­ed off 30 balls, but Het­my­er’s cal­cu­lat­ed ag­gres­sion turned the tide.

Shep­herd, Bartlett, and Liam Plun­kett all felt Het­my­er’s wrath as he launched six­es at the start of three con­sec­u­tive overs. Plun­kett’s er­rat­ic 17th over, which in­clud­ed a tow­er­ing Het­my­er max­i­mum and Jones’ dis­missal, left Seat­tle need­ing 30 off 18.

Brody Couch bowled a mixed 18th over, but Co­et­zee’s bound­ary kept the Or­cas on track. Bartlett’s penul­ti­mate over yield­ed nine runs, leav­ing Shep­herd to de­fend eight in the fi­nal over.

Het­my­er, how­ev­er, need­ed just two balls, smash­ing a mon­strous six over long-on be­fore cut­ting the win­ning runs through point, seal­ing a thrilling vic­to­ry at 169-6 in 19.3 overs.

CMC