Pakistan Super League is a Pakistani Domestic T20 Tournament which gets international level players to come and play for them. It was launched back in 2015 by the PCB. The teams are owned by various franchises. There are six teams named after various cities of Pakistan. This year’s PSL was already on and the league stage matches were done before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. The playoffs were left, which had to be postponed due to rapid spreading of the virus. In MARCH 2020, the PCB was not sure of what should could be done for deciding the winner of the tournament. There were talks that it should be decided on the basis of league standings. But then on 2 JULY 2020, the PCB announced that they plan to complete the season in November 2020. On 2 September 2020, the PCB confirmed the fixtures for the remaining matches.
After the league stages the four teams that had qualified for the playoff stages were Multan Sultans, Karachi Kings, Lahore Qalandars and Peshawar Zalmi. Dates of the playoff were announced with Gaddafi Stadium hosting all the four playoff matches. The playoffs were played on 14 and 15 November and the FINALS is scheduled to be played on 17th November. But later the matches were shifted to National Stadium in Karachi due to poor air quality in Lahore.
The First Qualifier was between Multan Sultans and Karachi Kings. Karachi Kings won the toss and elected to field first. Multan Sultans batting first scored 141/7 in their 20 overs. Ravi Bopara was the highest scorer for Multan scoring 40 off 31 balls. For Karachi, Arshad Iqbal was their best bowler. In his 4 over quota he took 2 wickets and gave away only 21 runs.
Batting second Karachi also scored 141/8 in their 20 overs with Babar Azam as their highest scorer with 65 off 53 balls and for Multan Sohail Tanvir took 3 wickets and gave 25 runs in his 4 over quota.
The match went into Super Over. Karachi batting first scored 13 runs for the loss of 2 wickets. Multan was unable to chase the Super Over target and only scored 9 runs of their Super Over. Karachi Kings won the super over and qualified for the finals of PSL 2020.
The Eliminator 1 was played between Peshawar Zalmi and Lahore Qalandars. Lahore won the toss and elected to field first. Peshawar batting first scored 170/9 in their 20 overs. For Peshawar Shoaib Malik scored 39 of 24 deliveries and for Lahore Dilbar Hussain took 3 wickets and gave 33 runs in his quota of 4 overs. LAHORE chased down the target of 171 easily with loss of 5 wickets and did it in 19th over. Mohammad Hafeez was man of the match as he scored 74 off 46 deliveries. By winning this match Lahore qualified for the Eliminator 2.
The Eliminator 2 was played between Lahore Qalandars and Multan Sultans. Multan won the toss and chose to field first. Lahore batting first scored 182/6 in their 20 overs. David Wiese was the top scorer for Lahore scoring 48 off 21 deliveries and for Multan Shahid Afridi took 2 wickets and gave 18 runs in his quota of 4 overs. Batting second Multan failed to chase the target of 183 and were able to score only 157 getting all out before the end of their 20 overs. Adam Lyth was top scorer for Multan scoring quick fire 50 off 29 deliveries. David Wiese was the top wicket taker as well for Lahore as he took 3 wickets and gave 27 runs in his 4 over quota. For his top performance David Wiese was awarded as man of the match.
FINALS of the PSL is set to take place between Karachi Kings and Lahore Qalandars on 17th November at National Stadium.
