Karachi Kings chased down a modest total of 118 against Quetta Gladiators in Rawalpindi on Wednesday to keep their hopes of making it to the Pakistan Super League (PSL) playoffs alive.
Kings were guided to victory by experienced Kiwi batter Tim Seifert, who scored 49 off 31 by hitting six 4s and two 6s. England’s James Vince and Pakistan veteran Shoaib Malik also contributed with 27 each.
However, Kings’ captain Shan Masood’s arid run with the bat continued as he got dismissed in the second over of the innings for just 7 runs.
But it was bowler Hasan Ali who set up the platform for the Kings’ batters.
Hasan picked four wickets for 15 runs in his spell of four overs. On a wicket that looked placid, Hasan mixed his lines and lengths well, foxing the Gladiators’ batters into gifting their wickets away to the Kings’ bowlers.
Apart from Hasan’s 4, Mir Hamza picked 1 and Zimbabwe’s Blessing Muzarabani and Zahid Mahmood picked 2 each.
Muzarabani, Irfan Khan, and substitute Anwar Ali also contributed to one runout — that of the former Gladiators skipper Sarfaraz Ahmed.
Earlier in the day, Gladiators started well with attacking English opening batter Jason Roy hitting three 4s, two off consecutive deliveries of Malik — also the first two balls of the game — and one-off Hamza before Muzarabani outsmarted him and got him to the top edge one to Hasan at third man.
Following Roy’s dismissal, Saud Shakeel was joined by Khawaja Nafay who has enjoyed some success in the tournament so far.
Both of them kept the flow of the runs quick and had started to flex their muscles before Hasan dealt a double blow to Gladiators’ hopes in his second over of the game.
He got rid of Saud and Nafay in the same over and Gladiators could never recover from the mini-collapse.
Ultimately, Gladiators lost nine wickets for 51 runs, of which the last five came for just 29 runs. Hasan was awarded the Player of the Match award for his 4/15.
