Unique entertainment of a ‘run down’ PSL

Both matches on Sunday kept all those watching at edge of their seats, but Monday's match ended up being boring

Both Pakistan Super League (PSL) matches on Sunday hung in the balance literally till the very last over, and the two cliff-hangers provided perfect demonstrations of the merits of low-scoring ties.

Long gone is the delicate balance between bat and ball that once made cricket, cricket. Now the batsmen reign supreme and the 20-over game has been one of the biggest perpetrators of this shift in power.

But the PSL has brought about a welcome change and, at the risk of speaking too soon, bowlers once again seem to have found some semblance of help from the conditions.



In the first match on Sunday, Islamabad United managed to defend 132 against Karachi Kings. With four needed off the last ball, Shane Watson’s perfect yorker to win the game was right up there with any last-ball match-winning boundary.



Peshawar Zalmi were not that lucky in the second match, as table-topping Quetta Gladiators managed to chase down their 136-run target. But not before the teams played out yet another nail-biter and it required some hefty hitting from Anwar Ali and Elton Chigumbura to take Quetta over the line.

The matches kept all those watching at the edge of their seats for the entirety of the contests and, barring the most die-hard of Karachi and Peshawar fans, was money and time well spent.

It is still early days for PSL, but Lahore’s Umar Akmal-inspired 193 on Monday was the only time that a team ran away with the game in the first innings. The Lahore-Quetta match was the first time in eight matches that the aggregate score crossed 300.



For comparison, the 2015 Indian Premier League — the definitive yardstick against which all T20 leagues are measured — had 35 matches out of a total of 60 in which more than 300 runs were scored by both teams combined.

What this means is that the PSL is decidedly lacking in the kind of run-frenzies that tend to excite many casual fans. No lusty blow after lusty blow, no batsman dominating the bowling, no scores of 200, and none of the glamour and glitz that comes with all of that.

But the PSL is no IPL — its creators have gone out of the way to stress upon that fact from day one. Low-scoring matches aren’t hindering the league as some may imagine. In fact, quite the contrary.

Nail-biters like the one served up on Sunday are ample proof that entertainment in cricket does not exclusively lie in sixes and fours. The PSL can be for the legions who do not lust for runs alone, for those who still heave nostalgic sighs when the names of men such as Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis are uttered in hushed whispers.

Quetta’s meek surrendering of the match against Lahore made for poor viewing — one-sided matches are often a hazard for games in which the side batting first scores big.

In cricketing terms, opting for pitches that help the bowlers may also prove to be a successful strategy. Pakistan’s batting has always been their weakness, and by raising the next generation on bowling-friendly pitches, the country may well produce batsmen that know how to negotiate the moving ball; whether it be seam, swing or turn.

But it is not without its pitfalls either. Young bowlers such as Usama Mir, Ziaul Haq and Mohammad Nawaz — all of whom have impressed so far in the PSL and are being touted as potential mainstays in Pakistan’s bowling attack of the future — have little experience dealing with batsmen wreaking havoc.

They don’t know what it’s like to bowl to the best in the world on flat pitches and small grounds. They don’t know what it’s like to be at the wrong end of a Chris Gayle or Shahid Afridi demolition. They don’t know what it’s like to see your bowling figures get destroyed in the blink of an eye.

To cope with all that, they need nerves of steel, hearts as big as bats these days and the best of all teachers — experience. But they are getting precious little of that last one here, where swing, bounce and turn are available for all who know how to seek them.

Young batsmen too, like Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam, need to learn the art of chasing scores close to or in excess of 200; the runs still need to be made no matter how dead the pitches may be. And here, with targets almost never crossing 150, they haven’t been put under the pressure of being expected to hit from ball one.

It is unclear whether the pitches and conditions that have yielded such low scores are a result of design or circumstance, but if matches in the PSL continue to be this closely fought, then few would be complaining by the end of it.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9th,  2016.

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