Bhanuka Rajapaksa and Kusal Perera celebrate Lahore Qalandars win in the PSL final
- Match winning knock of 62* off 31 balls
Sri Lanka’s Kusal Perera played a match-winning knock of 62* off 31 balls (5 fours, 4 sixes) to steer Lahore Qalandars to win the Pakistan Super League (PSL) against Quetta Gladiators by six wickets with a ball to spare providing an electrifying finish to the final played at Lahore.
There were a number of performances that might have deserved to be on the winning side in this final, but in the end, it was Perera and Sikandar Raza that earned the honour of being swarmed by their team-mates under the midnight Lahore sky.
Perera might have been parachuted in for just the tail-end of this tournament, but in the four games he played, he certainly made the most of his opportunities. He saved his best for last, taking on Gladiators’ other two most economical options in Shahzad and Abrar Ahmed before finally turning his attention on Mohammad Amir.
Qalandars needed 47 off the final three overs to complete not only the highest successful chase in a PSL final, but in any T20 final. If that wasn’t a dramatic enough script, the winning runs were struck by Raza, a man who had landed in Pakistan just ten minutes before the toss having played for Zimbabwe in the one-off Test against England at Trent Bridge. With eight needed off three balls, he polished the game off with a ball to spare with a six and a four, but that he was even in a position to score those runs was down to Perera, whose unbeaten 62 off 31 kept Qalandars in the chase when most logic dictated otherwise.
Playing alongside Perera for the Qalandars was Sri Lanka team mate Bhanuka Rajapaksa who scored 14. Two other Sri Lankans Avishka Fernando (29) and Dinesh Chandimal (22) were unfortunate to finish on the losing side for Quetta Gladiators.
Perera took the Player of the Final award.
Scores:
- Quetta Gladiators 201-9 (20) (Rilee Roussouw 22, Hasan Nawaz 76, Avishka Fernando 29, Dinesh Chandimal 22, Faheem Ashraf 28, Shaheen Afridi 3/24, Salman Mirza 2/51, Haris Rauf 2/41).
- Lahore Qalandars 204-4 (19.5) (Mohammad Naeem 46, Abdullah Shafique 41, Kusal Perera 62*, Sikander Raza 22*).
