Cricket: Next Pakistan Super League will not be held in the UAE

Dubai: The fifth edition of the Pakistan Super League wil entirely be held in Pakistan with no matches in the UAE, said Fawad Chaudhry, Minister of Information.

“We are taking PSL back to Pakistan in 2020 completely,” revealed Chaudhry while speaking at an event in Dubai on Sunday. He said PSL-2019 is the last edition of the major Pakistan Twenty20 cricket tournament being held in Dubai this year.

“I urge all Pakistanis living in the UAE to go to the stadium to watch matches as this will be last time the tournament is being held here,” he said. The call came due to the lacklustre response from the community last year as stadium remained empty in Dubai during the last PSL matches. “This is your country’s event, make it successful,” he said,

Dubai based ARY Group, which also owns a team Karachi Kings, has also launched a campaign ‘Maidan Sajana Hai; (fill the stadium) across the UAE giving incentives to residents to watch matches in the stadium.

PSL-2019 will kick off with defending champions Islamabad United locking horns with Lahore Qalandars on February 14. The franchise Twenty20 cricket league was launched by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in 2015. But the tournament was held in the UAE for the last four years as intenrational cricket players refused to go to Pakistan for security reason.

The fourth edition of the highly anticipated league will kick-off from February 14 and will conclude with the final to be played at the national stadium Karachi on March 17, 2019. Karachi Kings will play its opening match against Multan Sultans on February 15 at Dubai.

Final matches in Pakistan

Out of the total 34, the final eight matches of the PSL-2019 will be played in Lahore and Karachi while the final of the tournament will be played in Karachi on March 17. The rest of the matches will be played in Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.

Openining Ceremony

The grand opening ceremony of the 2019 Pakistan Super League will be held on February 14, 2019 in Dubai, with performances from some of the biggest names in the global and Pakistani entertainment industry.

American rapper Pitbull is expected to headline the PSL opening ceremony but it will not be restricted to just him as Pakistan band Junoon and pops band of an era gone by, Boney M will also make their presence felt. Others include the likes of Young Desi, Fawad Khan, Aima Baig and Shuja Haider as they look to light up the start of the fourth season of the PSL.

This opening ceremony will be followed by the first match of the PSL04 between Islamabad United and Lahore Qalandars.

In the last season, there was a good demand for PSL tickets through the league stages of the tournament before it touched a crescendo when the play-offs and the final came to Pakistan. The complete PSL fixtures with time can be found in this link: https://www.psl-t20.com/