Multans Sultans have made it six in a row. After finishing the Karachi-leg undefeated, the Mohammad Rizwan-led side started their Lahore campaign with a strong win against Peshawar Zalmi on Thursday, 10 February.
The Multan based side have so many heroes in their team that even on the days their Superman fails to turn up, there are multiple people waiting to rise up to the occasion to take them over the line.
And it was that kind of a day for Sultans through and through. First, it was Shan Masood’s 68 off 49 balls that made sure that despite Rizwan’s struggling innings (34 off 34) Sultans were not put into a slump. Rizwan also understood that it was not to be his day and kept on giving Masood strike in the very first ball of the overs.
The duo raced to 53/0 in the first 6 overs with Masood on 39 off 25 and Rizwan taking the secondary role at 9 off 11.
And then came the slump.
With Liam Livingstone and Shoaib Malik operating between the 7th to 10th over, Multan did not score any boundaries. Pressure resulted in back to back wickets of Rizwan and Masood that ended up opening the floodgates for Multan. But this time it was Tim David who came to the rescue. Coming in one down, David smashed his way to a 18-ball 34 which took them to a safe score.
Things would have been much better for Multan if it were not for the regular falling of wickets in the last five overs which stunted their momentum. They lost 6 wickets in the last five overs and scored just 50 runs despite David’s exceptional innings.
Coming into bowl in the second innings, Multan knew that they had to bowl well against a very long batting line up of Zalmi.
However it was once again one of their lesser known players that stood up and delivered the goods when required. Blessing Muzrabani was the wrecker in chief predominantly with his slower balls, which got the better of Zalmi batsmen.
The Zimbabwe international took two wickets in his very first over and got rid of Kamran Akmal and Haider Ali - two batsmen who have shown how dangerous they can be if given a chance.
Abbas Afridi used the bounce from the fresh deck to get rid of Liam Livingstone who had just started to shift gears similar to what Shahnawaz Dahani did later in the innings. He banged in a couple of short on to grab two wickets while the combined efforts of Imran Tahir and Khushdil Shah did the rest.
Zalmi never looked comfortable as the required rate rose and lost the chase halfway through the game by losing four early wickets. Ben Cutting played some shots late in the innings scoring 23 off 11, but it would have required a monumental support from the other side for anything to materialise.
At the end, Zalmi failed to play their registered 20 overs and got bundled at 140 with three balls remaining.
Shan Masood was adjudged man of the match for his gritty fight of 68.
With the win, Sultans are now six points clear of the second best team and have a healthy run rate of +1.243.