LA­HORE, Pak­istan – For­mer West In­dies white-ball cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard and West In­dies left-arm pac­er Shel­don Cot­trell com­bined to throt­tle Mul­tan Sul­tans in­to their third suc­ces­sive Pak­istan Su­per League with an 84-run win over de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons La­hore Qa­lan­dars on Wednes­day.

Pol­lard cracked one four and six six­es in an ex­plo­sive top score of 57 from 34 balls that pro­pelled the Sul­tans to 160 for five from their al­lo­ca­tion of 20 overs af­ter de­cid­ing to bat in the qual­i­fi­er at the Gadaf­fi Sta­di­um.

Cot­trell then de­stroyed the Qa­lan­dars top or­der in­side the Pow­er Play and fin­ished with three for 20 in three overs, and Pol­lard scalped one for three from one over to be a shoo-in for the Play­er-of-the-Match award, and the hosts were bowled out for 76 in 14.3 overs.

The Qa­lan­dars still have a chance to reach the PSL fi­nal when they play in the sec­ond elim­i­na­tion fi­nal on Fri­day.

In the fi­nal on Sun­day, Mul­tan will play the win­ners of that sec­ond elim­i­na­tor in which the Qa­lan­dars will face the win­ners of Thurs­day’s match be­tween Pe­shawar Zal­mi and Is­lam­abad Unit­ed.

Af­ter open­ers Mo­ham­mad Rizwan and Us­man Khan shared 53 for the first wick­et, Sul­tans ran in­to trou­ble on 90 for three in the 13th over.

Pol­lard launched an as­sault in the last five overs against the Qa­lan­dars and put on 65 with Tim David, af­ter they got re­prieves with Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al Sam Billings and Hus­sain Ta­lat shelling easy chances.

Pol­lard smashed Pak­istan left-arm pac­er Sha­heen Shah Afri­di for three six­es in the penul­ti­mate over be­fore he was bowled with the sec­ond ball of the last over by Har­ris Rauf, an­oth­er Pak­istan pac­er, who was the most suc­cess­ful Qa­lan­dars bowler with three for 34 from four overs.

Cot­trell swung the match de­ci­sive­ly when he struck twice in his sec­ond over and got Mirza Baig caught be­hind for eight and Ab­dul­lah Shafique lbw for a duck, and he added the scalp of Afri­di caught at cov­er in his third over.

In be­tween, new-ball part­ner An­war Ali bowled Fakhar Za­man for six, and the Qa­lan­dars stum­bled to 28 for four at the end of the Pow­er Play.

Billings made the top score of 19, and he was one of the three bats­men to reach dou­ble fig­ures, but the Qa­lan­dars, who fin­ished with 14 points from sev­en wins to top the league ta­ble, failed to put up a se­ri­ous chal­lenge.

CMC