Zalmi made tough work of a lowly chase of 60 but ended up as eventual winners despite Yasir Shah's 4/7.

By Abdullah Ansari (12th February, 2016)

Lahore Qalandars Team

Brendon McCullum*, Jason Roy, Fakhar Zaman, Umar Akmal, Grant Elliott, Mohammad Rizwan, Sunil Narine, Sohail Tanvir, Bilawal Bhatti, Yasir Shah, Mohammad Irfan Jr.

Peshawar Zalmi Team

Mohammad Hafeez, Dawid Malan, Kamran Akmal, Eoin Morgan, Sohaib Maqsood, Shahid Afridi, Darren Sammy*, Chris Jordan, Hasan Ali, Wahab Riaz, Mohammad Asghar.

Darren Sammy won the toss and as usual in the night matches with dew in the air, opted to field. Qalandars came out to bat in their usual aggressive manner and it backfired spectacularly right from the get go. Asghar bowled the first over and had McCullum caught at midwicket off the last ball, while Hasan Ali had Roy caught at mid-off off his first - two balls later, U Akmal was caught in the slips. Zaman countered against the spin but Elliott was also caught at slip off Hasan. Rizwan only lasted a couple of overs before slicing Wahab to Morgan while Narine was also caught at the boundary. Zaman's resilience came to an end for 33 as he was caught behind off Jordan while the tail folded quickly to set a small target of 60 for Zalmi.

In response, Lahore struck in just the second over as Malan fell LBW to Tanvir in a dubious decision. There was nothing dubious about Hafeez's dismissal, though, a simple stumping after making just 3. K Akmal and Morgan scratched around for a while before the former fell to Yasir, caught in the deep while Afridi perished in a customary manner, caught at the boundary for 13. Maqsood didn't last long as he fell to Yasir while Morgan was given out caught incorrectly off Yasir as well for 23. The leg-spinner also claimed the wicket of Sammy to set the cat amongst the pigeons but Jordan and Wahab remained calm to get to the target with three overs to spare.

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