Los Angeles Knight Riders claimed their first MLC title at the Oakland Coliseum on Saturday night, beating Washington Freedom by a single run on the last ball of the match. Freedom finished 163 for nine, one run short of the 164 LAKR had set, in a final that was decided across the last two deliveries of an extraordinary match.
LAKR batted first and built their innings on an opening stand before failing to convert it into a total that gave them any comfort. Andre Fletcher (47) and Colin Munro (40) put on 66 for the first wicket, giving LAKR a platform, but neither batter reached fifty and the impetus was never sustained. Matthew Tromp added 39 and Jahmar Hamilton 10. The middle order never found the gear to go beyond a par total, and Freedom bowled them out for 164 with two deliveries still left in the innings. Ben Dwarshuis took three wickets, Mitchell Owen, Nikhil Chaudhary, and Rachin Ravindra two each, with Saurabh Netravalkar completing the haul with one.
Before the match, Netravalkar had described the Oakland Coliseum drop-in pitch in terms that would prove prescient for his own batting side.
“This is a very different kind of pitch. It’s not a traditional cricket pitch. The dimensions are small, and bowlers need to be a little thick-skinned here. A good ball can also go for a six. Here, it’s a ball-by-ball game and not an over-by-over game.”
Saurabh Netravalkar, Indica News, July 18, 2026
His own bowling on those conditions was disciplined enough to restrict LAKR to 164. What his batting side did with the same 20 overs was the match.
Freedom’s chase was broken open before it began. Three wickets inside the powerplay for just 29 runs left them chasing 165 from a position where the damage to their batting order had already been done. This was the same batting lineup that had set a record-breaking T20 chase in the semi-final just two nights earlier at the same ground. None of that form carried into the final’s first six overs. A 65-run fourth-wicket stand between Andries Gous (40) and Nikhil Chaudhary (25) brought Freedom back within reach and kept the equation manageable, but LAKR captain Jason Holder read exactly where the match needed to go. The former West Indies skipper used the experience of more than two decades of professional cricket to target Freedom’s middle order, picking up three wickets in a spell that cost 31 runs. Sunil Narine, operating with his usual control, matched him with three wickets of his own. Between them, the two West Indians accounted for six of Freedom’s nine wickets and kept them deep in trouble for the bulk of the chase.
With Freedom needing 43 from three overs and their recognised batting effectively gone, Obus Pienaar walked out and changed the match. The right-hander struck five sixes and three fours in 24 balls, an innings of 53 that dragged Freedom from the impossible to the improbable. Every boundary the Coliseum crowd responded to brought Freedom closer to a title that had been conceded three overs earlier. The final over began with Freedom needing eight from five deliveries, Pienaar already having faced the first ball of the over.
WHAT. A. FINISH.
The final over of the MLC Grand Final, between Ricky Ponting & Steve Smith’s Washington Freedom v the LA Knight Riders, came down to the very last ball.
Talk about drama 😲 pic.twitter.com/ScX86OwNWQ
— 7Cricket (@7Cricket) July 19, 2026
Insider Read:
Jason Holder gave the ball to Shadley van Schalkwyk for the final over. Van Schalkwyk is a USA domestic cricketer, not an international bowler in the conventional sense of what that term means in franchise T20. Holder had already bowled his four overs and so had Narine. There was no other option. What van Schalkwyk did across the next five deliveries is the detail every match report on this final will understate. On the second ball, he bowled Pienaar. When the man carrying the chase is dismissed by a bowler who had no business being in the same arena as the situation demanded, the match is over. Next ball, another wicket. Two wickets in two balls. Hat-trick ball. This is the moment a bowler’s instincts take over in a way that experience alone can contain. Under the weight of 12,000 people, a hat-trick delivery in a final, and four runs needed off three: the natural impulse is to go for the wicket rather than execute the delivery that simply stops the boundary. Van Schalkwyk gave away four on ball four. The hat-trick ball went for a boundary. The equation came back to four off two. The Coliseum tilted. On the penultimate ball, he gave away one run. Three needed off the last delivery. Three for a win, two for a tie and a Super Over. Lahiru Milantha attempted the second run. He was run out. The fact that van Schalkwyk composed himself on ball five to give away only one run, after conceding a boundary on ball four in the highest-pressure moment of his cricket life, is where this title was actually won. Had he bowled another loose delivery on ball five, the match changed hands. He did not. When a batting side needs three off the last ball of a final, the instinct to attempt the impossible second run is inevitable. Van Schalkwyk is the reason Freedom were in that position rather than needing a boundary or fewer.
This was Washington Freedom’s second consecutive MLC final loss by a margin that could be counted in single digits. In 2025, MI New York beat them by five runs. On Saturday night, they fell short by one. In both cases, the match reached them in the final over. The difference in 2026 is that Freedom came from 29 for three inside the powerplay, from a position where the title had been conceded, and brought it to the last ball on the strength of one lower-order innings. Pienaar deserved to be on the winning side. So did the cricket.
For LAKR, this was their first MLC final in four seasons of competition, and they won it. The title was built on Holder’s death-bowling intelligence, Narine’s middle-over control, and the composure of a USA domestic cricketer who was handed the ball in the most pressured six deliveries in American cricket history. Van Schalkwyk delivered. The Knight Riders are MLC champions.
No post-match statements had been released at time of publication.
SOURCES
- MLC winners history com
