||CF Correspondent||

Skipper Shuvagata Hom scored a fastest Twenty20 half-century to guide Shinepukur Cricket Club into the Dhaka Premier League T20 semi-final as they defeated Mohammedan Sporting Club by 22 runs at the Sher-e- Bangla National Stadium on Tuesday.

Shuvagata scored 18-ball 58 to help Shinepukur post a challenging 192-4 and later on the back of a discipline all-round bowling effort they restricted MSC to 170-9 to earn their second successive win and move beyond the group stage in the tournament.

The second game between MSC and Legends of Rupganj is nothing more than a formality as table toppers of each group enter the last-four of the tournament that was launched by Bangladesh Cricket Board from this season.

Shuvagata, who scored his record half-century in 16 balls, added undefeated 83 runs in 4.4 overs with Towhid Ridoy, who played his part in the middle order to near perfection with his unbeaten 66 runs.

MSC were on the hunt in the start on the back of some aggressive batting by opener Avishek Mitra and Abdul Mazid (33) as they added 46 runs in 4.2 over before Hamidul Islam removed the latter to give them the first breakthrough.

The onus was on Mohammad Ashraful to take the game from their onwards if they wanted to reach the mammoth total but the former skipper failed to take up the responsibility as he perished making 22 runs.

Irfan Shukkur made unbeaten 52 runs to fight a lone battle as the run rate increased at drastic pace after their middle-order failed to take up the required responsibility.

Shuvagata believes his free fluent batting in the last match gave him the confidence to have a go at the bowler when he arrived at the wicket.

“Basically when you arrived at this kind of situation there is nothing called planning and all you have to do is go and whack the bowlers,’’ Shuvagata told reporters after the match.

“Basically I try to score runs in every match and yesterday the situation demanded to score boundaries in almost every ball and I was lucky that it turned out that way. Probably I was hitting the ball well,’’ he said.

“Basically you don’t think about the record when you go to bat and it was the same case with me as well. We had to score quickly because there were only four to five overs left,’’ he said.