Ali Sheikh
PESHAWAR: Left-arm medium fast bowler Asmat Shah’s three wickets steered PPC Qalandars to a dramatic 12 runs victory against defending champions PPC Tigers in the second edition of the RMI Media Cricket League-2018 being played here at Govt High School No. 1 ground on Wednesday.
Tigers skipper Tariq Afaq won the toss and invited Qalandars to bat first. PPC Qalandars scored 112 runs for the loss of six wickets with Zia Ul Islam scoring 23 runs including two boundaries, Mehmood scored 20 runs with three boundaries, and Aftab Ahmad, and Akhtar and Adil Pervez scored 19, 17 and 11 runs respectively.
For Tigers Sajjad Khan got two wickets, Zeeshan and Saad got one wicket each. In reply, to the 112 runs target, PPC Tigers failed to chase the target and could score only 100 runs in the allotted 10 overs. Ashfaq made elegant of 24 runs, Danish scored 19 runs, Saad scored 12 runs, none of the other batsmen could cross the double figures.
For PPC Qalanders Asmat Shah Garwaki played a key role in guiding the team to victory by taking three vital wickets for 15 runs in his three overs spell. Asmat got two important wickets of the rival openers – Ashfaq (24) and Zeeshan (0) and Maqsood (02). Hamid Ullah claimed two wickets, Adil Pervez, Durrani got one wicket each.
Thus PPC Qalanders won the match by 12 runs and Asmat Shah was declared as Man of the Match. It was the second upset of the quarterfinals stage as earlier in the first quarterfinal PPC Kings had defeated strong PPC Qabails by four runs.
