In the 24th match of Pakistan Super League (PSL) 2022, Peshawar Zalmi defeated Islamabad United by 10 runs. This was the third consecutive win for Wahab Riaz’s team. In this match, wicket-keeper-batter Mohammad Haris of Zalmi also scored a half-century in 18 balls.
Haris smashed Islamabad’s bowling attack with a knock of 70 off 32 balls. In this exceptional innings, he completed his half-century in 18 balls, which is the joint-third fastest 50 in PSL history. After this, Yasir Khan (35) and Shoaib Malik (38) also made important contributions, taking Peshawar’s score to 200. Peshawar set a decent target of 207 runs for Islamabad to chase.
Islamabad had a magnificent start by reaching 50 in the fourth over but opener batter Rahmanullah Gurbaz (46 off 19) got hitched by Salman Irshad. Then United wicketkeeper Azam Khan took the lead, who played an innings of 85 runs in 45 balls. But apart from him, no other batsman could do anything special. After holding the innings till the end, Azam Khan became the victim of Wahab Riaz on the first ball of the 19th over.
From here the match changed and Zalmi’s return was made by Wahab, who took Azam’s wicket. Islamabad’s team scored 196 runs in 20 overs for the loss of 7 wickets and fell 10 runs behind the target. Fast bowler Salman Irshad took three and Riaz took two wickets. Talat and Cutting also got one wicket each.
In this match, Wahab took his 100th wicket and became the first PSL bowler to reach the milestone.
Taking to Twitter, he wrote: “Alhamdulilah for our 3rd consecutive win!”
Praising Haris, he added: “Really happy with our brand of cricket and especially @iamharis63 has made a lot of difference with his batting.”
He further added that he is looking forward to reach the play offs as well.
Shoaib Malik also took to Twitter to congratulate Wahab and Haris.
“Congratulations @PeshawarZalmi, truly a team effort today, great knock by youngster #Haris. Congratulations @WahabViki on your wickets century, keep going strong guys,” he wrote.
Haris also took to his Twitter and wrote: “Hat-trick of wins for us. Alhamdulilah for another player of the match award.”
Haris bagged Player of the Match award and its his second award in the three matches he played in PSL 7.
