It has taken eight matches to break the jinx, but they finally have. Karachi Kings have won their first game in the 2022 edition of the Pakistan Super League on Friday, 18 February.
Playing against the second-placed team on the table, Kings were assured of the victory three balls before the finish with Lahore needing 25 off the final three. Karachi have been off colour all season and looked off till the halfway point of the game, setting up a below par total against the mastery of Rashid Khan who took four wickets in the game, giving away just 16 runs. His spell of bowling included the wickets of Babar Azam, Qasim Akram, Imad Wasim and Chris Jordan, four dangerous men in the Karachi line-up.
His brilliance of 4-1-16-4 meant that Karachi scored just 149 runs and once again failed to survive the 20 overs.
However, that wasn’t the only four-wicket haul in the game as Karachi’s Mir Hamza dealt blows to Lahore throughout the innings, making sure that they did not control the game at any point of the second innings.
The first one was the biggest fish of the day, Fakhar Zaman, who has been - by far - the best batter in the tournament. That snowballed into the removal of his opening partner Abdullah Shafiq in the fourth over - once again by Hamza and Lahore were pushed back despite the small total.
The entire team struggled for timing and failed to score runs and the scoreboard pressure did the rest in the last two overs. Consistently losing wickets throughout the innings, Lahore had their last hopes out in the middle in the final three.
Both David Wiese and Harry Brook were batting at 21 off 17 each. Needing 43 off the last three, they started off well getting 12 runs from the 18th over. But just when there seemed hope, both of them got out trying to hit Hamza out of the park. While Brook was caught in the deep, Weise was dismissed by a tight LBW call. And who else but Mir Hamza could have done it. The final over bore two wickets for Karachi and they were able to restrict Lahore to 127 winning the game by a margin of 22 runs.
Mir Hamza was declared the man of the match for his 4-0-27-4.
The loss would not be doing any harm to Lahore since Multan’s win in the day over Quetta made sure that Shaheen Afridi’s team already qualified to the top four. However, as they say in cricket that one loss in the run up to the final stages is always a good sign so that teams can figure out their problems.
It was similar kind of day for Lahore’s batters and they would hope that they can fix their problems before the playoffs stages of the tournament.