Lions, Wolves play for National T20 Cup

Asif Ali single-handedly lifted Faisalabad Wolves to a 5 wickets win and made his team qualify for the final of the Faysal Bank National T20 Cup here at the Gaddafi Stadium on Saturday night.
With the winning stride, the Wolves will now face strong Lahore Lions team in the final on Sunday. Asif Ali won the game for Wolves by remaining unbeaten at 66. At one stage Multan Tigers bowlers were all over Wolves batsmen but Asif came in and played his natural game and won the game for Wolves. The final will start 4:00 pm between Lahore Lions and Faisalabad Wolves at the Gaddafi Stadium. Multan which chose to bat gathered 120 runs, thanks to Naved Yasin’s 46 and Sohaib Maqsood’s 25 while Amer Yamin added 10 runs. It were Asad Ali who took two wickets while Kamran Shehzad and Imran Khalid who shared one wicket each halted the Tigers progress.
In the chase, Asif took things in his hands after Wolves were at 31 for three. He held the innings knitted to keep the runs coming and got 18 runs support from Jahandad Khan while Imran Khalid contributed useful 10 in the Wolves’ win. Mohammad Irfan, Rahat Ali, Zulfiqar Babar and Rizwan Haider shared one wicket each. Wolves reached with an over to spare and five wickets in hand.
Shehzad ton takes Lahore to final: Ahmed Shehzad’s second T20 ton fired Lahore Lions to the final of the Faysal Bank T20 Cup with a 51-run win against first-timers Bahawalpur Stags at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. Shehzad started the match at a rapid pace with a flurry of boundaries and by the time he lost his opening partner, he had scored 39 off 20 balls in a 41-run opening stand. He stayed dominant in a 96-run stand with Mohammad Hafeez and brought up his hundred off 54 balls. Once Shehzad was out, Hafeez lifted up the tempo, taking 24 runs off an Imranullah Aslam’s over, and took the team past 200. Kamran Hussain picked up four wickets, three of them in the last over. Chasing a big target, Bahawalpur were dented by Abdul Razzaq’s double-strike in the first over, Hamid Ali and Kashif Siddiq, both falling off their first balls. At the halfway mark, Bahawalpur had lost four wickets and the required rate had shot up to 14.20. As the wickets continued to tumble, the lower order flayed and got some runs, but it was all too late and Bahawalpur were knocked out after making a promising debut in the tournament.
Scores: Lahore Lions 211 for 5 (Shehzad 107, Hafeez 65, Hussain 4-23) beat Bahawalpur Stags 160 (Aslam 43, Riaz 3-23, Rasool 3-27) by 51 runs.