Pollard and Cottrell blow Lahore Qalandars away

Chasing a complete down in opposition to the Qalandars’ bowling lineup has develop into probably the most daunting problem within the PSL, and the Sultans had been smart sufficient to be versatile. They received the toss and batted first for the primary time this season, and simply the fifth time of their historical past. But they have a tendency to choose these moments properly; they received three of the earlier 4.

That victory appeared something however assured for a lot of the primary innings, with the Qalandars at their imperious greatest with the ball, stifling the Sultans within the first 15 overs. The common first innings rating this season right here was 193, however it grew to become apparent pretty quickly the Sultans would not get anyplace close to that. They managed simply 46 within the powerplay, and whereas the Qalandars hadn’t picked up any wickets, it did not appear as in the event that they wanted to.

Haris Rauf, at his fearsome quickest, struck the primary blow, although the ball he cleaned Usman Khan up with was a slower one. Zaman Khan removed a scratchy Rilee Rossouw cheaply, an enormous wicket, notably given Rossouw’s imperious report in opposition to the Qalandars. Rashid Khan prised Mohammad Rizwan out with a fallacious’un to scale back the Sultans to 90 for 3, and Qalandars solely tightened their grip on the sport.

It was a sensational decrease order counterattack from Pollard that dug his aspect out of a gap, although it wasn’t with out its possibilities. Sam Billings dropped a skier pretty early on within the onslaught, with Shaheen Afridi and Hussain Talat lacking possibilities to do away with him. In the meantime, he was grinding by the gears, pushing up the Sultans whole to a defensible stage, by no means extra so than when he powered three sixes off Shaheen within the penultimate over; the 20 the Qalandars captain conceded made it his costliest PSL over. It additionally introduced up a 33-ball 50 for Pollard, profitable him the Player-of-the-Match award.

Haris hit again with a scintillating last six balls, hitting speeds in extra of 150 repeatedly and cleansing up each Pollard and Khushdil Shah. It noticed simply six runs scored and clawed a little bit of momentum to the Qalandars approach, turning the duty over to the batters.

But Cottrell, newly arrived on the PSL, wrenched the sport out of the Qalandars arms earlier than they’d even had the chance to get the chase off the bottom. A double-strike in his second over, making prodigious use of inswing to the right-handers, put paid to each Mirza Baig and Abdullah Shafique, whereas Anwar Ali from the opposite finish seamed one superbly to knock again the highest of Fakhar Zaman’s off stump. Cottrell wasn’t executed with the ambush but, returning to dispatch Shaheen with a wild swing off the second ball he confronted discovering Usman Khan at cowl.

There was extra trauma about to be inflicted on a shell-shocked Qalandars. Pollard, their tormentor in chief with the bat, noticed two wickets fall in his first over, sloppy operating catching Talat out earlier than a sensational operating catch from Abbas Afridi introduced the curtains down on Sikandar Raza.

Qalandars’ ideas had been already turning to Friday’s eliminator. Billings and Rashid fell in fast succession, earlier than a couple of lusty blows from David Wiese and Rauf gave a packed, partisan dwelling crowd one thing to cheer for. It was to be ephemeral, nevertheless, with Abbas Afridi delivering the knockout blow as Haris feathered one by to the keeper.

Sultans had been thrashed in final yr’s PSL last by this very opposition. Today, they took a serious step in direction of making certain they may not even want to satisfy them at that stage another time.