Lahore Qalandars defeated Multan Sultans by 1 run in a high-scoring contest match
Lahore Qalandars defeated Multan Sultans by one run in the final of the eighth edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) to become the first club to win back-to-back championships. After winning the toss, the Qalandars chose to play first in a rematch of last year’s final at the Gadaffi Stadium in Lahore on Saturday.
The team also posted a solid first innings total of 200/6 in their quota of 20 overs, with Abdullah Shafique top-scoring with 65 off 40 and captain Shaheen Afridi also scoring a game-changing 15-ball 44. Later, Rilee Rossouw’s 52 off 32 and Mohammad Rizwan’s 34 off 23 made for an intriguing chase, but Multan couldn’t find the impetus at the end of their innings that Shaheen had provided for the home side.
The left-arm pacer also took four wickets in his final two overs, dismissing Tim David, Kieron Pollard, Anwar Ali, and Usama Mir, all of whom were huge scalps in the context of the game, allowing him to end with the best bowling figures in a PSL final (4/51). Rashid Khan took two wickets for 26 runs as Qalandars made history.
In the end, it was a nail-biter of a contest. Despite Shaheen’s 18th over, in which he took three wickets and surrendered only six runs, Multan Sultans managed to claw their way back into the game, with Khushdil Shah and Abbas Afridi scoring 22 runs off Haris Rauf’s penultimate over.
The match could have gone either way with only 13 needed from 6 deliveries and a relatively inexperienced Zaman Khan bowling the final over, but Zaman kept his nerve as Qalandars won by the narrowest of margins by 1 run. He only gave up one boundary and a couple of extra runs on an overthrow from close quarters, but in the end, Shaheen became the first skipper to win back-to-back PSL titles.
