Mumbai: Hindi film superstar Salman Khan’s team Mumbai Heroes won the inaugural match of the 2024 edition of the ‘Celebrity Cricket League’ (CCL) at Sharjah.
Mumbai Heroes, spearheaded by Riteish Deshmukh, won the match against Kerala Strikers.
‘CCL’ fuses the elements of Test cricket with T20. Each team gets 2 innings of 10 overs, and the one with the higher score wins the match.
The inaugural match was a star-studded affair with the likes of Salman Khan, Bobby Deol, Suniel Shetty, Kiccha Sudeep, Daggubati Venkatesh and Sohail Khan registering their attendance and being witnesses to Mumbai Heroes’ first win of the tournament.
Mumbai Heroes had luck on their side since the beginning as they won the toss and chose to bat first.
In the first innings, Kerala strikers gained a lead of 8 runs as they chased a target of 76 runs. In their second innings, Mumbai Heroes stuck a victorious ton with leading efforts from Sharad Kelkar and Navdeep, giving Kerela Strikers a massive target of 92 runs in 10 overs.
Mumbai Heroes’ win in the inaugural takes them to the top of the points table of the tournament.
Salman Khan in an interview on JioCinema during the inaugural match shared, “When we started in the first year, I never thought that we will see 10 years. The simple reason was that they were not competing against each other. Our Mumbai team was not competing but the south teams were so competitive and then Bhojpuri came in and then Kolkata came in and we had no choice but to compete with them. Even though we haven’t won the championship, there will be a time. I hope it is this time because our boys have been working really hard. They shoot and then they train and then they get injured and then they go back to shoots.”
“At home, for us, it is like the World Cup or IPL because Sohail is here and dad watches it so all the matches that are played, we watch them quite seriously. Dad gets really upset when he sees that our team has messed up. We watch this very seriously and also take it very seriously,” he added.
On Saturday, ‘CCL’ will host two matches, first, the Bhojpuri Dabbangs will square off against Telugu Warriors at 2:00 p.m.
The second game will be played between Karnataka Bulldozers and Mumbai Heroes at 6:30 p.m. IST.
‘CCL’ streams on JioCinema.