Kent all-rounders Azhar Mahmood and Darren Stevens enjoyed a victorious BPL as the Dhaka Gladiators won the inaugural event on Wednesday afternoon.

In what turned out to be a pretty one sided final, the Gladiators beat the Barisal Burners by eight wickets with 26 balls to spare.

The pair made key contributions throughout the tournament for the Dhaka Gladiators, although Stevens sat out the semi-final and final as the franchise owners opted to go with both Shahid Afridi and Saeed Ajmal instead.

Azhar Mahmood was at the crease as the winning runs were hit in the highly successful tournament and was named the Most valuable foreign player, for which his response at the end of the day was: “The journey has been great. The body is aching.”

Mahmood hit 270 runs throughout the tournament, at an average of 33.75, whilst being more than useful with the ball picking up seven wickets throughout the ten games he was involved in.

As for Stevens, he could consider himself unlucky at missing out for the last couple of games as he had been a linchpin in the Dhaka middle order throughout the qualifying stages.

Stevens hit 170 runs throughout the ten games in which he featured at an average of 24.29, whilst picking up just the one wicket after being mostly overlooked for his bowling.

Both Mahmood and Stevens will now return to Kent for pre-season fitness testing, before joining up with the rest of the squad for the ten day training camp in Antigua.

Azhar Mahmood will then miss the first couple of months of the season as he joins up with the Kings Punjab XI in the Indian Premier League.