They say bowling is a weak link discipline of T20 cricket. Which basically means that a bowling attack is as good as its weakest bowler, given that a bowler can bowl only 4 overs even on his best day there are 16 overs to be bowled by other bowlers as well. But what if you have 3 good bowlers, that’s 12 overs of good bowling.
Lahore Qalandars have a bowling attack which has Shaheen Afridi, Rashid Khan & Haris Rauf (the three highest wicket takes since the start of 2020) that’s a quality bowling unit, with one relatively “weaker” bowler, which was James Faulkner and while Islamabad gave Shaheen respect, they went after James Faulkner and they gave away their wickets. This was just proof that if you as a whole have a good bowling attack, even your “weaker” bowlers benefit.
James Faulkner hasn’t been playing much cricket, the last two tournaments he played were the BBL. Injury has played a role in that. Faulkner after going for a 4 and a 6 was quick to realise that pace on the ball isn’t the way to go on this pitch, so he went straight to his change ups and got rewarded for them.
Given the pressure from the other end through Shaheen’s bowling, Islamabad United had to attack Faulkner and he quickly realised that slower balls was the way to go thus escalating the risk percentage of Islamabad United’s attacking shots and giving away wickets to Lahore.
Rashid Khan has played 3 games in the PSL and he has bowled the most economical spell and the 6th most economical spell.
Abu Dhabi is a slow surface. The surface for this game was slow. It was evident as the batsmen weren’t able to play their attacking shots, but Rashid with that assistance made it impossible to play him. 4 overs for just 9 runs with all runs coming singles, it’s as good as a bowling performance can get.
Slower balls went for 5.99 runs per over, quicker balls went for 7.38 runs per over. Cricket is a game where the pitch dictates the situation and the quicker teams read the pitch, the better.
Both the bowling units got this fairly quickly and decided to change their approach straight away, apart from the first 3 overs of both innings, bowlers went to the slower balls and they came out better.
Islamabad United believes in batting depth and it’s an important part of their game. It’s the batting depth which gives the batsmen up the order to go after the bowling hard irrespective of the match situation.
That batting depth was very useful as Islamabad entered the final 4 overs of the innings with the side 101/7.
Islamabad, thanks to Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali & Mohammad Wasim who were batting at 8, 9 & 10 respectively, managed to score 42 runs in the final 4 overs of the innings. The trio combined to score 51 runs in 38 balls. The batting depth is basically what made sure that Islamabad United got to a total which they would manage to defend.
Chasing sides prior to today won 13 of their 14 games, Quetta was the only side to have won by defending a total and they did it by choking the opposition. Lahore needed to score at 7. 2 runs per over. But as the innings progressed that required run rate always kept going up, never did it go below that rate after the 2nd over of the chase.
The same trio which added valuable runs in the death overs also were effective in the powerplay and kept the required rate under check, the PP phase is the easiest phase to score runs in and if you come away with that required rate under check, as a bowling side you take that as a win.
With spinners yet to bowl, the start in the powerplay helped Islamabad as Fawad further choked the scoring rate for Qalandars. By the time the death overs started, LQ needed 46 runs in the final 5 overs in a phase of the game where Islamabad’s bowlers had done well.
Lahore at one point needed 22 runs in 7 balls. The bowling team are clear favourites at this stage of the innings. For Islamabad to lose this, they would need a lot of things to go wrong. And wrong they went, as Rashid Khan managed to find the gaps and the edge to get Qalandars home. Cricket is a cruel game, you could do everything right and still end up with a loss. Both the sides made a lot of mistakes and that’s what made the game entertaining. The result didn’t come Islamabad’s way, but as the PSL progresses the hope is that they get back to their winning ways.
