Gous, Smith tons help Freedom script highest successful T20 chase

Washington Freedom on Thursday (BST) pulled off the highest successful chase in T20 history, running down 266 to beat defending champions MI New York by six wickets in the Eliminator of MLC 2026 at the Oakland Coliseum, a game that also produced the format's joint second biggest partnership (241) and, at 51, more sixes than any T20 match has managed before, reports Cricbuzz.

Andries Gous made 132 and Steve Smith an unbeaten 110, their stand of 241 in 89 balls eclipsing the previous record for any wicket in domestic/franchise leagues - set by Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers in 2016 - as Freedom got home with eight balls to spare and knocked out the holders.

MI New York's total had been built on a blistering ton from Nicholas Pooran, who was just one ball slower than Chris Gayle's record 30-ball century, with strong support from Kieron Pollard's 64 and Quinton de Kock's 51. It would take a spell from an unlikely source - Rachin Ravindra, finishing with 4 for 29 - to give Freedom any hope of making the impossible possible. There is a point in T20 cricket, reached more often now than the format's early theorists ever imagined, where scores stop feeling like scores and start to feel like weather - something that happens to you, rather than something you chase. But for half the game, 266 looked like exactly that kind of number. By the time Freedom had finished with it, 266 looked instead like an opening bid.

Because this was modern T20 batting on a flat surface and skewed boundary sizes at its absolute best, dealt almost entirely in sixes.