Highest PSL score (238), Most sixes in an innings in PSL (16), Joint fastest half-century (Asif Ali, 17 balls), Most Expensive PSL spell (Shaheen Shah Afridi, 1/62 in 4 overs), Fastest PSL century (Cameron Delport, 49 balls) and the least number of 2s in a PSL innings (Islamabad United, ONE). This is the list of records broken in the first PSL 4 match to be played in Pakistan, a match in which Islamabad United stormed into the playoffs thanks to a 49 run victory.
Lahore won the toss and elected to chase — a trend in the PSL this season as teams which have won the toss have elected to chase 26 times of 27 games — so it was no surprise that they decided to chase with the pitch a good batting surface and the ground ridiculously small, Lahore could aim to chase any total United would set for them.
Their decision to bowl first looked like a good one after the first ball was bowled as Shaheen Shah Afridi bowled a beautiful ball to find Ronchi’s edge. But that joy was short lived as Shaheen Shah Afridi bowled the most expensive PSL spell which saw him concede 62 runs in his 4 overs.
The first innings total was built on Cameron Delport’s blistering century, an innings which saw him score a boundary off the first 5 balls he faced. He eventually ended up scoring 13 fours and 6 sixes as he made merry in Karachi.
Walton and Delport built a 118 runs partnership in 69 balls. Both were equally destructive on the Lahore bowlers, who were not helped by their poor lengths in bowling — given the small boundary sizes, the onus is on the bowler to get his lengths spot on, erring in length even a bit will see you go for runs — as Islamabad United scored 150 by the end of the 14th over and all set to smash the highest PSL score record and even smash the record of their highest score.
With 150 on the board and 6 overs to go, Asif Ali joined Delport in the middle. The first full over of their partnership saw them score 8 runs, but this was just the start of things to come. United plundered 80 runs in the final 5 overs, with 5 boundaries and 8 maximums, singles to this point was as good as a dot ball with almost everything flying to or over the boundary.
In the final overs carnage, Asif Ali tied the record of the fastest PSL half-century, getting there in 17 balls and equalling the record set by Kamran Akmal against Karachi Kings last year in Lahore. He scored a boundary every 2.3 balls (better than career rate of a boundary every 5.05 balls), the highlight of Asif’s brief but destructive innings was when he scored 16 runs in the first 3 balls of Shaheen Shah Afridi’s final over.
The big-hitting, the shorter boundaries and some poor bowling combined to see Islamabad United get their highest score in the PSL and also break the record of the highest score.
With 239 runs needed to chase the match, Lahore Qalandars had no other option but to attack from ball one. And Qalandars got a good start but with their batting line up top heavy and no one else in the lower middle order, the onus was left on Fakhar Zaman, Anton Devcich and Haris Sohail to do bulk of the scoring but they could contribute 56 runs in 35 balls between them.
Sohail Akhtar was the star with the bat for Lahore, his 75 runs in 34 balls saw some clean hits over the boundary as he utilized the small dimensions of the ground to his advantage by picking the gaps as well.
So given the ground dimensions and the good batting pitch, it was no surprise that the batsmen were dominating proceedings. The bowlers were reduced to bowling machines — the economy rate in this match was 10.68 runs per over — so a bowling performance of 4.75 RPO in 4 overs while everyone else was carted around and then picking 6 wickets with 4 of them being batsmen in the top 5 has to be a really special one. It was Faheem Ashraf who delivered that spell.
Faheem Ashraf was outstanding with his bowling, he gets the ball to skid off the pitch which makes it harder to face him and when he gets his line and length right he is absolutely impossible to hit out against. Faheem Ashraf in his last 2 games has picked 10 wickets for 37 runs in 7 overs, there has not been a better time for one of Islamabad United’s star bowlers to come back in form right when the side was looking to guarantee a spot in the playoffs.
With this crushing 49 runs win victory over Lahore Qalandars, Islamabad United have sealed their playoffs spot and will be playing an eliminator against Karachi or Lahore.