Lahore Qalandars became the first PSL team to successfully defend their title by beating Multan Sultans in a nerve-wracking Pakistan Super League (PSL) final at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore last week.

Shaheen Shah Afridi became the luckiest captain for Lahore Qalandars. In his first stint as captain last year, he won the first PSL title for his team and this year became the first captain in the PSL history to defend the crown.

Chasing a daunting target of 201 runs, the Multan Sultans came very close to achieving the target but lost by one run.

Lahore’s thrilling one-run victory over Multan marked a exciting start of the eighth season of the Pakistan Super League. And the league ended in a similar fashion. In both games, Zaman Khan bowled the 20th over and had to defend 15 runs in Multan and 13 runs in Lahore.

In the first four PSL seasons (2016-2019) performance of Lahore Qalandars was disappointing as they finished last consecutively.

In the fifth edition in 2020, Qalandars qualified for the final but failed to win. Next year Lahore failed to repeat last year’s performance and finished 5th.

In 2022, Lahore Qalandars’ management surprisingly announced Shaheen Shah Afridi as the skipper for the PSL seventh edition. It was a tough task for Afridi as Lahore in previous six editions had only once reached the last four. But Shaheen not only accepted the challenge but also became the youngest captain in the Pakistan Super League history to lift the trophy.

In the eighth edition this year, Lahore Qalandars retained Shaheen as the skipper. He led from the front not only with his bowling, but also with the bat. Especially in the final, his 44 not out off just 15 balls became the turning point of the final.

Until the PSL 2023, Shaheen Shah Afridi had only scored 20 runs or more once in his T20 career. He did, however, surpass his top T20 score twice during this tournament: once against Peshawar Zalmi in the league phase (52), and then in the final. In both of those contests, Shaheen also recorded a four-wicket haul.

Pakistan Super League-8 gave some new faces to Pakistan cricket that can easily replace veteran players in near future.

The PCB management took a good decision to give rest to some senior players against Afghanistan and give chances to players who performed in the PSL-8.

Saim Ayub, Mohammad Haris, Azam Khan, Tayyab Tahir, Zaman Khan and Ihsanullah got rewards for their consistent performances in the home league.

The eighth edition of the Pakistan Super League was one of the most entertaining seasons due to high-scoring matches, especially in Rawalpindi.

Pindi Stadium hosted 11 matches of the PSL-8. Six matches were won by the team chasing while five times team batting first defended the total.

In Pindi almost every game was an event in the record books. The high-scoring nature of the venue made any total tough to defend - targets of 240-plus runs were chased down twice in three days.

The Pindi ground witnessed 515 runs aggregated by Sultans and Quetta Gladiators, a world record in T20 cricket. Their scores were 262 for 3 and 253 for 8, the top two totals in the league’s history.

The team batting first made 200-plus runs in seven of the 11 matches in Pindi, and five times the chasing team got over that mark. The 12 totals of 200-plus runs are the highest for any venue in a T20 tournament, surpassing the eight totals for Multan Cricket Stadium across 14 matches in the National T20 Cup in 2020.

The Pindi ground perfectly supported batsmen where average runs per over was 10.28 which is by far the highest for a venue in a T20 tournament, bettering Edgbaston’s 9.17 during the 2018 T20 Blast.

The other venues for PSL-8 provided help to both bowlers and batsmen. Karachi with 8.65 runs per over was the lowest.

The tournament’s run rate reached 9.2, which is the highest for any T20 tournament with more than 20 games, thanks in part to Rawalpindi’s high-scoring contests. In the 34 games of The Hundred Men’s Competition in 2022, 8.99 was the previous highest.

Abbas Afridi and Ihsanullah, the Sultans’ youthful pacers, shone with the ball at a time when scoring runs appeared to be simple. Abbas finished with 23 wickets, which made him the tournament’s leading wicket-taker. He also claimed three wickets in a row during the 515-run encounter. Ihsanullah concluded with 22 wickets and a 7.59 economy rate.

Only one bowler took more wickets in a PSL edition than Abbas Afridi (23) and Ihsanullah (22) - Hasan Ali took 25 for Peshawar Zalmi in 2019.

Multan Sultans skipper Mohammad Rizwan became a PSL legend.

Rizwan remained the most successful batsman of the PSL with 550 runs in 12 matches, averaging 55 and a strike rate of 142.85 with one hundred and four fifties.

Rizwan is the only batter in PSL to have scored 500+ runs in three seasons. Babar Azam has achieved this milestone in two editions.

Peshawar’s captain Babar Azam was behind Rizwan with 522 runs in 11 appearances at an average of 52.20 and a strike rate of 145.50, including one century and five half-centuries.

Among the foreign players, Multan Sultans’ Rilee Rossouw was the most successful batsman with 453 runs in 11 matches with an average of 45.30 and a high strike rate of 171.59. He hit one hundred and three fifties.

Abbas Afridi averaged 16.17 in 11 matches. Ihsanullah averaged 15.77.

Rashid Khan of Lahore Qalandars took 20 wickets, most by a foreign player. His average was 14.05.

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