Danish Aziz’s cameo of 13 (45) and Mohammad Ilyas’s three wickets against Quetta Gladiators take Karachi Kings to playoffs after a crucial 14 runs victory on Saturday at Shiekh Zayed Cricket Stadium.
Lahore Qalandars depended on KK’s defeat to secure their position but they ended up joining Quetta Gladiators to go back on the plane.
Opting to bat first, Babar Azam and Sharjeel Khan put Karachi on the driving seat followed by an opening stand of 73 runs off 55 balls.
Naseem Shah started the proceeding with 5 wides and a no-ball, Babar kept finding for momentum in his innings while Sharjeel hit a few boundaries to keep the scorecard moving.
Hassan Khan was hit with two consecutive sixes off Sharjeel Khan before dismissing Babar.
However, three wickets that fall at the space of only nine deliveries took Gladiators back into the contest. After the top order being done and dusted, Quetta stopped the runs coming, conceded only 16 runs in four overs.
Chadwick Walton found some space in Aziz Khan and hit him a six and a boundary in the 17th over before Danish Aziz got the better of Jack Wildermuth and smashed him 33 runs in the final over of the innings.
The final over from Wildermuth was the most expensive over ever in the history of PSL ever – conceding 33 runs to put KK’s total 176/7.
QG who managed to win only two games throughout the season got to a slow start and apart from few boundaries they never propel the scoring rate.
Jake Weatherald (25 off 24), Saim Ayub (19 off 15), and Usman Khan (15 off 13) got a decent start but did not take the responsibility and keep losing wickets one after another.
Mohammad Ilyas, in specific, was the nightmare for Quetta, returning figures of 3 for 9 from his first two overs never let Gladiators batsman settle. He conceded 30 more in his last two overs but it was too late as the contest had slipped away from Gladiators.
Sarfaraz Ahmed came to bat in the 8th over to continue the hustle. Hassan Khan picked four boundaries in his 15-ball 24 gave a little hope but the rest couldn’t provide much support to the skipper as Quetta looked too far from the target.
17 runs by Sarfaraz off the last over was of little dramatic before Mohammad Amir bowled an over conceding 5 runs. Thus, Quetta lost the match by 14 runs.
Brief Scores: Karachi Kings 176/7 in 20 overs (Sharjeel Khan 45, Danish Aziz 45; Arish Khan 4-28, Abdul Nasir 1-15) beat Quetta Gladiators 162/6 in 20 overs (Sarfaraz Ahmed 51 Jake Weatherald 25; Mohammad Ilyas 3-39, Arshad Iqbal 2-39) by 14 runs.