The 2025 Abu Dhabi T10 concluded on 30 November at the Zayed Cricket Stadium, crowning UAE Bulls as champions after an 80-run hammering of the Aspin Stallions. It was domination by design — a match that compressed everything fans love about cricket into 60 balls per side and exposed the brutal truth of this format: hesitation is death, impact is legacy.
Phil Salt holed out in the third over trying to clear mid-on, Namibia’s bowlers threw the kitchen at England, but nothing scrambled the timeline like Tim David. The Australian power-hitter smashed 98 off 30 balls in the final — an innings that turned a target into a verdict before most spectators had processed the first innings change. The Bulls posted 150/1 in their 10 overs, propelled almost entirely by David’s savagery and calibrated by Babar Azam’s quiet strike farming at the other end.
T10 cricket lives in micro-epochs. The “powerplay” is essentially a teaser. The 4–7 over window is the market crash. Overs 8–10 are aftershocks. If T20 cricket is about building pressure, T10 is about unleashing it in measured bursts before pulling the plug entirely. Tim David understood that assignment in ways only a handful of hitters on the planet currently do.
David’s 30-ball storm had 12 sixes and three fours, finding the boundary 15 times and scoring 86 runs in six overs between overs 3 and 9. He didn’t just attack overs — he annexed them. The 5th over produced 22 runs. The 7th bled 19. The 8th disappeared for 27 — the knockout punch that broke the Stallions’ spine, strategy, and scoreboard appetite in one go. It was not innovation. It was inevitability delivered with contempt.
To understand the scale: 150 in T10 cricket is a psychological outlier. In global franchise circuits, 180 in T20 is elite, 190 is risky, 200 is fever dream. In T10, 150 is 210 territory converted to 60 deliveries. It signals not just batting power, but “run threat coverage” — the ability to apply pressure without needing to hit every ball for six. David hit half his balls for boundary, and rotated the rest like someone auditing risk, not chasing dopamine.
The Stallions’ reply started in survival mode when it needed sprint logic. Openers lacked intent clarity through the first 12 balls. Singles came, but boundaries didn’t. By the fourth over, the rate demanded 14.6 an over. By the sixth, it needed 17.2. In T10, once that required-rate spiral exceeds 12.5, the game shifts from “possible” to “miracle unbankable.” England marveled with a 37-ball 76, but the occasion demanded a 25-run over immediately, not mathematically later.
Pakistan’s bowlers ensured the miracle never made it into conversation. Fazalhaq Farooqi removed the Stallions’ No.3 in the second Super Over ball, but it was the middle-overs strangulation that really killed hope. Warrior seamer Sompal Kami bowled two overs for 15 runs and one wicket, pinning batter depth against length changes. Marco Jansen delivered 1/11 off two, mixing heavy-ball bumpers at 134–138 kph with 118 kph cutters that forced false loft arcs. Rashid Khan produced 2/9, tying timing with 92–96 kph skidders and late-dip googlies that demanded decisions batters simply didn’t have time to make.
That bowling timeline, layered by Azam’s captaincy inputs, confirmed what the Bulls had weaponized all season: T10 bowling is not about pace alone — it’s about forcing batters to learn three timing languages inside 60 deliveries. The Stallions were stuck in one.
Across the tournament, T10’s rising global momentum was evident not just in crowds, but in talent recalibration. Phil Salt racked 160 runs in the league for the Yaks earlier, while Maxwell re-signed for Melbourne Stars in the upcoming BBL, yet it was David’s innings that reverberated across franchise scouting circles. He has become the batter prototype short leagues crave: power-dense, risk-aware, over-weaponizing, clock-breaking.
12BET Shortlisted for Sportsbook Operator of the Year at SBC Awards 2025