Englishman David Willey showed nerves of steel in the death overs for the Multan Sultans to escape by the barest of margins against Quetta Gladiators on Monday, 31 January.
The left arm swing bowler picked three wickets from his final two overs in the game under tremendous pressure to give Multan Sultans an unlikely victory in the Pakistan Super League.
At a time when local stars like Shanawaz Dahani and Imran Khan were being picked apart by some exceptional shot making from Iftikar Ahmed and Sohail Tanvir, Willey took out crucial wickets at the right time to make the difference while defending 175 runs in 20 overs.
The game see-sawed throughout the second half as three bowlers from Sultans (Willey, Imran Tahir and Khushdil Shah) took three wickets each and put Quetta under pressure, while others like Dahani and Khan proved to be extremely expensive to give the pressure away. The two went for a total of 76 runs from their combined 5 overs and if it were not for Willey, Sultans would have lost this game by one over to spare.
It was heart in the mouth stuff in the final over, when two well struck shots fell right inside the boundary line with Multan defending 8 off the final over, and it left Quetta captain Sarfaraz Ahmed fuming on the touchline
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Earlier in the day, Multan lost the services of their captain Mohammad Rizwan early, who was dismissed for a duck for the first time in 37 innings. It was only due to the belligerence of Shan Masood (88 off 58 balls) that Multan were able to stay alive. While the middle order failed to do much, Tim David’s 28 off 16 balls got them over the edge of 170 runs that seems to be safe on the turning surface.
This was Multan’s third win in a row and they are maintaining the top position in the league with a healthy runrate of +0.476.