Islamabad United kicked off the Sharjah leg of the PSL with a game against Quetta Gladiators, Kaptaan Misbah-Ul-Haq recovered from his injury and made a return to the playing 11 while JP Duminy made his Islamabad United debut in place of Andre Russell. Quetta won the toss and elected to bat on a Sharjah pitch which was easy to bat on in the start but as the ball got older, scoring did become difficult.
1st Innings
Luke Ronchi began with a bang; after his poor outing in the first two games in Dubai, Ronchi announced himself in Sharjah scoring 43 runs in 26 balls at one stage taking 24 runs off a Hastings over which saw the run rate hover at close to 8.5 runs per over. But as soon as Ronchi was dismissed, Islamabad United lost their momentum.
JP Duminy and Misbah-ul-Haq who were both playing their first games of the tournament combined to score 36 runs in 51 balls which sucked the momentum of the game, Duminy did not manage to score a single boundary in his 26 balls stay scoring just in singles while he was at the crease.
Credit should be given where it’s due, Sarfraz captained his side well and kept changing the fields as and when required which gave protection to his bowlers for the bad balls — which they did not bowl a lot — and also ensured that strike rotation was not easy. Rahat Ali and Mohammad Nawaz were the picks of the bowlers for Quetta as they conceded 38 runs in their 8 overs and picked a wicket.
Islamabad United’s two highest scoring overs saw them score 24 and 18 runs, which made up for 31% of the runs scored by the side in just two overs which summed up Islamabad United’s innings.
2nd Innings
The second innings was a Kevin Pietersen show, for a man playing the last tournament of his career it is easy to wonder why he will be retiring after this season as he showed that he was a class apart from the rest of the players.
To illustrate this, let’s take into account the number of runs scored by other batsmen in comparison to Kevin Pietersen. All other batsmen minus Kevin Pietersen scored 199 runs in 190 balls at 6.28 runs per over, Kevin Pietersen scored 48 runs in 34 balls at 8.47 runs per over which is close to 2.20 runs per over better than the average batsman.
Whenever the required run rate seemed to go over a 6.5 RPO, Pietersen would manage to find a boundary and release the pressure valve which made it easier to chase for the rest of the batsmen.
While Mohd Sami & Rumman Raees bowled well, it was a bit disappointing to see Faheem Ashraf bowl too many loose balls in his spell. Too many boundary balls in a match where you are defending a low total is a quick way to kill the game
Islamabad United next play Lahore Qalandars on Friday, 2nd March in Sharjah. Lahore Qalandars who are currently winless in the tournament will be looking to break their losing record in their next game. So things don’t get easier for Islamabad United, but the best things in life never come easy.