Defending champions Multan Sultans beat Quetta Gladiators by a huge margin of 117 runs in the match here on Friday at Gaddafi Stadium for the eighth victory in the tournament.
The winning team’s captain, Mohammad Riz-wan, along with his form top order Riley Russo and Shaun Masood, scored brilliant half centuries and scored the first of this edition while the second larg-est collection in the history of the league.
In the pursuit of 246 runs, Quetta Gladiators’ batting line-up completely failed and the entire team piled up 128 runs. Quetta Gladiators’ seven bats-men could not even enter the double figures. Middle order batsman Umar Akmal remained prominent by scoring 50 off 23 balls with six sixes and two fours. The other two batsmen who entered the double fig-ures, Jason Roy scored 38 and Sarfraz Ahmed re-mained unbeaten at 17.
Multan Sultans’ David Wiley, Shahnawaz Dhani, Khushdal Shah and Asif Afridi took two wickets each. Imran Tahir took one wicket.
Earlier, Multan Sultans had scored 245 runs for the loss of 3 wickets in the stipulated base overs thanks to half-centuries of all three form-top orders. This is the second largest total in the history of HBLPSL. Islamabad United had scored 247 runs for the loss of 2 wickets against Peshawar Zalmi in the last edition, which is by far the largest collection of any team in the history of the league.
The duo of captain Mohammad Rizwan and Shaun Masood gave the winning team a good start of 119 runs and laid the foundation of the big collection. Wicketkeeper-batsman played an unbeaten innings of 83 off 54 balls with seven fours and three sixes. Shaun Masood scored 57 runs with the help of one six and six fours from the strike rate of 150.
However, South African batsman Riley Russo made the cut. He played a lightning fast innings of 71 off 26 balls with a strike rate of 273. His innings included 9 fours and 4 sixes. Mohammad Irfan, Naseem Shah and Ghulam Mudassar took one wicket each.
Playing XI:
Quetta Gladiators: Jason Roy, Ahsan Ali, Will Smeed, Sarfaraz Ahmed (c), Iftikhar Ahmed, Umar Akmal, Noor Ahmad, Sohail Tanvir, Naseem Shah, Ghulam Mudassar, Mohammad Irfan.
Multan Sultans: Mohammad Rizwan (c, wk), Shan Masood, Rilee Rossouw Tim David, Khushdil Shah, Aamer Azmat, Asif Afridi, Rumman Raees, Imran Tahir, Shahnawaz Dahani, David Willey.—APP
