T20 Pakistan Super League cricket tournament is about to start.

 The T20 Pakistan Super League cricket tournament is about to start.

 

Pakistan's Islamabad - Pakistan was a pariah in international cricket when Dubai and Abu Dhabi staged the inaugural season of the six-team Pakistan Super League (PSL) cricket tournament in 2016. Since the Sri Lankan cricket team was ambushed by armed men in Lahore in 2009, no foreign team had entered the nation, with the exception of Zimbabwe.

 

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) was compelled to establish an away-from-home in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A generation of Pakistani athletes began and finished their careers without ever taking the field in front of a home crowd in an international match. In addition, despite there being no official proclamation of a ban, Pakistani players were rejected from the Indian Premier League (IPL), the greatest Twenty20 event in the world, due to long-standing tensions with India, a nearby cricket superpower.

 

The on-field performance of the Pakistani cricket squad in white ball cricket left a lot to be desired. International cricket is gradually making a comeback in Pakistan, where two of the "Big Three" teams—England and Australia—visited last year for the first time since 2005 and 1998, respectively. India continues to be the only major team that has gone an entire decade without playing Pakistan in a bilateral series. However, the PSL could probably stake a claim to being not just the second-best T20 cricket league in the world but also the event that restored Pakistan's cricketing fortunes after seven tremendously successful editions.

Beginning on Monday, the eighth season of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) will include the defending champion Lahore Qalandars and Multan Sultans, who finished second last year. This will be the first time the tournament's 34 matches will be played at four separate locations around the nation.

 

In the 2021 T20 World Cup, Pakistan was the side to beat, winning all five of their games before being shocked by Australia in the quarterfinal. They reached the championship game the next year but lost to England. According to Hassan Cheema, strategy manager for two-time PSL champions Islamabad United, the national team's success at the last two T20 World Cups is evidence of the PSL's influence on the game.

 

"Despite its institutional constraints, Pakistan possesses a wealth of talent that allows it to compete with the best. The PSL enables a portion of that gap to be closed, which is sufficient for Pakistan to be competitive at the highest levels, according to Cheema.

 

The teams

 

Five clubs competed in the first two PSL seasons. Since 2018, the competition has featured six teams: Lahore Qalandars, Multan Sultans, Peshawar Zalmi, Quetta Gladiators, and Karachi Kings. Last year, Lahore defeated Multan to claim victory. Peshawar Zalmi has advanced to the postseason in each PSL season, whereas Islamabad United is the only team to win the competition twice (in 2016 and 2018). At least once has been won by each of the six teams.

 

The Quetta Gladiators, one of the tournament's four most reliable clubs, haven't advanced past the first round of the playoffs since 2020. The 2020 winner Karachi Kings finished the previous season with the lowest record in tournament history, winning just one out of ten games.

 

The venues

 

The games will be played in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Multan, making this year's tournament the first in which four of the six teams would have home fan support. The first 14 games of the tournament will be contested in both Multan and Karachi over the course of two legs. The remaining games will thereafter be played in Rawalpindi and Lahore, with the championship game taking place on March 19 at Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium.

 

The players

 

The six PSL teams signed at least 36 players from ten different countries in December of the previous season. Ten players from the England series are participating, including Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali, who won the 2022 T20 World Cup.

Matthew Wade, a well-known Australian wicketkeeper-batsman, is playing in his first PSL game for the Karachi Kings.

 

Babar Azam, the current captain and second-best T20 batsman in the world, first came to prominence in the PSL over the years and eventually joined the national team. Shadab Khan, an all-around player, and the bowler's Shaheen Shah Afridi and Haris Rauf initially gained recognition in the PSL.

If you read or visit the website for more articles click on the link:

https://atifshahzadawan.blogspot.com/