CricViz analyst Kieran Parmley looks at the latest action in the Pakistan Super League.
Multan Punish Zalmi’s Ill-Discipline
After picking up two wickets and conceding at 10.16 runs per over inside the Powerplay during their first five matches, Peshawar Zalmi’s Powerplay struggles with the ball continued with Shah Masood cashing in for the unbeaten Multan Sultans, who were put into bat by Zalmi skipper Wahab Riaz. Sultans found themselves at 53-0 after 6 overs, bringing their aggregate Powerplay score against Zalmi to 114-0 across their two games this season. Zalmi’s loose-cannon bowling display, providing width through both the off and leg side allowed for well-controlled and risk free Powerplay scoring for Masood – his attacking shot percentage of just 52% shows just how little intent the left-hander had to show in order to capitalise on today’s Powerplay bowling display.
At the other end however, Mohammad Rizwan had a rare off night, limping his way to a run-a-ball 34. Rizwan rarely looked comfortable playing his attacking strokes and instead looked to rotate the strike 43% of the time – his innings allowed Peshawar Zalmi to make a small fightback through the Middle Overs but his wicket preservation in a way could play advantage to Multan Sultans’ strengths in PSL 7 – death hitting and batting depth.
David Fires, Zalmi Fightback
Multan Sultans’ Death batting has been one of the keys to their unbeaten start in PSL 7, scoring at 13.43 runs per over between Overs 16 and 20 during the Karachi leg of the tournament, comfortably the highest of the six teams. This quality has been largely down to the form of Tim David, who has scored 85 runs from 37 balls across the two games this season against Zalmi but his dismissal towards the end of the Death overs in this game allowed Peshawar Zalmi to stem the flow of runs by opening up an end for fresh batters to come to the crease and hit from ball one, a tricky task on today’s pitch – they picked up 6 wickets and reduced Multan Sultans to 11.40 rpo at the Death today.
There was a high element of risk to the Peshawar Zalmi death bowling approach, picking up wickets from full and wide deliveries; similar lengths had been easily dispatched over the ropes during the Karachi leg. The success of the Peshawar Zalmi pace attack today could just be a one off and down to the natural volatile nature of death batting and bowling, it could however also signal to other sides that forcing attacking strokes on a slightly trickier pitch to bat on than Karachi and taking wickets may be a go-to Death overs tactic pushing forward.
Sultans Dominate the Powerplay
After putting 182-7 on the board, the Multan Sultans pace attack were looking to make an immediate impact against a fragile Peshawar Zalmi batting unit, who coming into this game had lost two Powerplay wickets in each of their last three games.
Unlike the Zalmi attack, Sultans were well disciplined, keeping their line generally in the off stump channel and hitting back of a length – the 8-10 metre mark was the one that brought them reward, with all three Powerplay wickets falling to deliveries in this region and nearly 50% of their Powerplay deliveries hitting such length. Whether this was the original plan coming into the match or a change of tactic after learning about the nature of the pitch during their batting innings, it proved very effective.
Zalmi were unable to recover from this, despite the arrival of Liam Livingstone now allowing them to play an extra batter with Ben Cutting slotting in at No.7. The lack of scores from their newly formed opening duo should be of concern and maybe an area to look at moving forward, with Kamran Akmal averaging 19 and Haider Ali averaging 20. Perhaps a better combination would be altering the entry point of Haider Ali and allowing him to face more overs of spin, with Livingstone or even Cutting/Rutherford stepping up and opening the innings – either way, Zalmi need to step up their game and adapt to their new combination and the Lahore pitch quickly to stay in the playoff places after a schooling from ruthless Multan Sultans, who remain unbeaten after six wins on the trot.
