Islamabad beat Karachi to remain unbeaten
Islamabad United continued their unbeaten start to the Pakistan Super League season with a six-wicket win over Karachi Kings.Chasing just 129, Azam Khan and Shadab Khan added 45 for the third wicket to put their side firmly in control.Having seen Azam bowled by Mohammad Nabi for 31, Shadab took his side to the brink of victory with 47 from 40 balls.He saw his stumps broken by Abbas Afridi with the scores level, before Mohammad Nawaz struck a single from the following delivery to seal four wins from four for Islamabad.Karachi were put into bat by their opponents and were immediately in trouble, with top order batters David Warner and James Vince bowled for three and four respectively.Opener Tim Seifert top-scored with 30, while four batters were dismissed for single figures as Kings slid to 102-7, before Abbas hit 24 from nine to close their innings on 128 without any further wickets lost.The result sees both sides remain in place in table, with Karachi in third and Islamabad four points clear of Lahore Qalanders at the top, having played one game more.Scorecard, PSL fixtures & results, table
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The Guardian
30-05-2025
- The Guardian
Have bat, will travel: Raza and cricket's wanderers follow in footsteps of WG Grace
Do you remember the first of Zimbabwe's three ODIs against Bangladesh in 2022? No? Let me refresh your memory. Bangladesh's batters had racked up 303 for two. Zimbabwe had lost both openers by the end of their second over. They were 62 for three when Sikandar Raza came to the crease. He scored 135 of the 240 runs the home side needed and Zimbabwe won with nearly two overs to spare. Raza rescued them in the ODI that followed, too – another century – and ended up top-scoring in Zimbabwe's first series win in three years. The then 36-year-old put his determined spirit down to his training in the Pakistan Air Force: 'I couldn't become a fighter pilot,' he said, 'but I think, as a person, I will always be a fighter.' Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion There's plenty of dash about him – but this week it was literal. On Saturday afternoon he was scoring a half-century for his country in a Test match against England at Trent Bridge. Twenty-four hours later he was hitting the winning runs at the Pakistan Super League final in Lahore. The journey – he flew economy – included a near 100-mile drive between the Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports. Next time he should borrow an F-16. Raza's feat has raised cheers and eyebrows in equal measure. For some – especially delighted Lahore Qalandars fans – it is the ultimate heroic expression of club commitment. For others it is one more harbinger of a cricket calendar ready to collapse from franchise overload (it's worth noting that the all-rounder had already forgone this year's Tests against Ireland and Bangladesh for his PSL commitments). Imad Wasim, who played for more franchise teams than any other player in 2023 and 2024, summed up Raza's decision thus: 'If you're getting paid, you'll go.' Concerns are understandable. The fixture crush (and sums on offer) leave players subject to temptation and the matches themselves open to abuse. Sri Lanka Cricket were certainly unimpressed earlier this year by the behaviour of Dasun Shanaka, whose first-class side, Singhalese Sports Club, had recalled him from the ILT20 league in Dubai. You might argue that the all-rounder had done all he could on his mercy mission to help them avoid relegation, hitting 123 off 87 balls at No 7. By the time he was out, mid-morning on day three, he'd dragged SSC back into contention. And then, at lunchtime, he vanished from the ground. A concussion substitute had been agreed after he was hit playing a sweep shot, which made it even stranger when he showed up that night in Dubai, a four-and-a-half-hour flight away, batting for his ILT20 team. His 34 off 12 deliveries helped Dubai Capitals to victory and never has a doctor's note seemed more convenient. Shanaka insisted that he had told SSC he was leaving early, but Sri Lanka Cricket still fined him $10,000. But it's easy to shake heads, wag fingers and ignore that this dilemma is as old as the sport itself. Overlapping obligations are baked into cricket's history, including one of its greatest origin stories of all. WG Grace did not live in an era when he could jump in a jumbo and race above the clouds to his next fixture, but he did a good job of maximising the rail and stagecoach routes. On Friday 11 August 1876, MCC had been asked to follow on in their second innings against Kent and Grace's next game for Gloucestershire was already in the back of his mind. 'As I had to play at Bristol the following Monday, and did not think we could save the match, I meant to get home as soon as possible. Consequently I opened my shoulders to the bowling.' Talk about unintended consequences: hHe had hit a hundred by the close and spent Saturday racking up the first triple-century in first-class cricket. It took him most of Sunday to get back from Canterbury. He opened the batting against Nottinghamshire on Monday morning and scored 177 (including an all-run seven). After taking eight wickets on the Wednesday he headed out to bat the following day at Cheltenham, and finished with another triple-century. Those 839 runs in eight days were the beginning of his legend. In 1962, Garry Sobers was determined to squeeze in every innings he could as South Australia's 'guest player'. Due to play in West Indies's first Test against India on Friday 16 February, he spent the Monday compiling 251 in a Sheffield Shield match against Richie Benaud's New South Wales, and the Tuesday taking six for 72 to secure the game. The 55-hour journey from Adelaide to Trinidad was one of the longest flight routes in existence – and Sobers just made it on to the field. And what of Graham Gooch? He, too, was determined to give his all both to club and country in 1988, when the fifth and final day of the Sri Lanka Test clashed with the opening day of Essex's title-chasing match against Surrey. Happily, both matches were in London. Unhappily, England failed to wrap up their game at Lord's before lunch as they should have done. Essex, fielding only 10 men, watched Darren Bicknell and Alec Stewart put on a century partnership at the Oval as Gooch sweated in the Lord's turret. Even worse, when England did finally get the single run they needed for victory, the presentation was delayed because the BBC, who insisted on showing it live, was waiting for Neighbours to finish. It just goes to show that – to paraphrase St Paul – while all things are possible, they're not all profitable. That was certainly the conclusion Sunil Narine came to when contemplating the 9,000-mile round trip between Dallas and Birmingham required to get him from Major League Cricket to the Vitality Blast finals day two summers ago. Perhaps Shakib Al Hasan learned it too, after flying all the way to the UK for a single championship game last September and finding himself with a ban for an illegal bowling action. Time to think global, play local …
Daily Mail
27-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Sikandar Raza saga shows the sinister trend haunting cricket's T20 franchise leagues - and the dangerous world it opens up
If you hadn't followed the story closely, you might have been surprised to tune in to the last few balls of this year's Pakistan Super League on Sunday evening, and see a guy at the crease called Sikandar Raza. After all, barely 24 hours earlier, a guy called Sikandar Raza had been scoring 60 for Zimbabwe against England at Trent Bridge. How many Sikandar Razas does cricket need?
BBC News
25-05-2025
- BBC News
Zimbabwe's Raza flies in to take Lahore to PSL title
Pakistan Super League, LahoreQuetta Gladiators 201-9 (20 overs): Hasan 76 (43); Shaheen 3-24Lahore Qalandars 204-4 (19.5 overs): K Perera 62* (31), Raza 22* (7)Lahore Qalandars won by six wicketsScorecard Sikandar Raza hit the winning runs to win Lahore Qalanders the Pakistan Super League, a little more than 24 hours after he was playing for Zimbabwe against England in their Test loss at Trent all-rounder struck a six and a four from consecutive deliveries to take Lahore to victory against Quetta Gladiators with one ball to 202 for victory, Raza joined Kusal Perera at the crease with 20 balls remaining and the pair staged an unbroken 59-run partnership to complete the highest chase in a PSL scored 201-9 after winning the toss, with Hasan Nawaz striking a 43-ball 76, while star Lahore seamer Shaheen Shah Afridi took topped the regular season table while Lahore finished fourth, but the Qalanders won three consecutive knockout games to seal their third title in four to follow. Who led the individual standings at the 2025 Pakistan Super League? Most runs1. Sahibzada Farhan (Islamabad United) - 449 runs2. Fakhar Zaman (Lahore Qalanders) - 4393. Hasan Nawaz (Quetta Gladiators) - 3994. James Vince (Karachi Kings) - 3785. Abdullah Shafique (Lahore Qalanders) - 376Most wickets1. Shaheen Shah Afridi (Lahore Qalanders)=2. Abrar Ahmed, Faheem Ashraf (both Quetta Gladiators), Hasan Ali, Abbas Afridi (both Karachi Kings), Haris Rauf (Lahore Qalanders) - 17
