Sharjah: Multan Sultans, who lost to Islamabad United by 33 runs on Tuesday night at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium, will now have to depend on a slip-up from Peshawar Zalmi to make it to the knockout stages of Pakistan Super League (PSL). If Peshawar win both their games, then Multan, who started off brilliantly in this tournament and then slumped to four successive defeats, will be out of the tournament.
Answering to a query from Gulf News as to what had resulted in Multan crashing to successive defeats, coach Tom Moody said: “T20 cricket and tournaments like these are all about momentum and it is great if one is on the positive side of that momentum. We had that share at the beginning of the tournament, but unfortunately, we are on the opposite side of that at the moment. Whatever we have tried, we were coming up second best. Our destiny is not in our hands now.”
Moody is hoping that they get to play in the knockout stages. “We hope we get another opportunity but we do have to start playing a lot better cricket than what we have done in the recent days. It is probably a blessing if we do get another chance.”
England’s left-arm spinner Samit Patel, who hasn’t played international cricket since his last Test against Pakistan in 2015 on this ground, showed how deadly a bowler he can be with a double-strike, which included the wicket of Kumar Sangakkara, to push Multan onto the backfoot. Patel had also bagged four wickets to ensure victory over Peshawar in the previous match.
When asked how has he earned such success in T20 despite being a spinner, Patel said: “I have a plan of bowling straight. If they miss a hit, the biggest thing in cricket is if you leave the stump, especially in T20, it could be costly. So I try and bowl straight as possible and I try and change the length according to each batsmen. Being a batsman, I also know what the batter is going to do and then bowl accordingly.”
Multan would have crashed to a bigger defeat but for Kieron Pollard’s aggressive 71 off 47 balls with six sixes and five boundaries. Pollard’s knock did make Islamabad bowlers nervous too but Patel said: “There is always a bit of panic when he [Pollard] is batting, but we held our nerve and we have lot of experience out there to do it.”
Even Moody hailed Pollard’s knock. “Credit goes to Pollard the way he played and gave us a glimmer of hope, but one man can’t do it alone. He did his very best but we needed to be going at both ends to overcome that total. Losing early wicket is never easy and is the wrong way to go about chasing big totals.”
Luke Ronchi, who won the man of the match award after giving Islamabad a quick start with 36-ball 58, said: “You want to win games of cricket and that’s why you play the game. At the moment we’re doing a wonderful job.”
