As the third edition of the Pakistan Super League moves from Dubai to Sharjah, with Islamabad United taking on Quetta Gladiators in Wednesday’s encounter, every team has something tangible to take with them – except for Lahore Qalandars.
The Qalandars are the only team that is yet to win a match at PSL 3. This is reminiscent of the first two seasons for the team from Lahore, where they finished bottom of the pile on both occasions, in turn being the only team to miss out on the playoffs both times.
The pile has now become bigger with the addition of Multan Sultans, who have been quickly off the blocks in PSL 3. The Sultans’ addition gives Qalandars some respite, for it means that each team now has to play 10 league games before the playoffs, giving Lahore the time to make a comeback.
But truth be told, the comeback does not look coming. For Lahore’s defeats aren’t a result of lack of good enough personnel – or the absence of the rub of the green – or simply not having a game plan. Their game plan is their problem.
For the inaugural PSL, when the squads were first announced, Qalandars stuffed their squad with power players up top, who back then were spearheaded by Chris Gayle. Out went Gayle after a shambolic first season and in came Brendon McCullum, whose own playing philosophy overlaps with the Qalandars’ – all-out attack.
The outcome wasn’t much different in PSL 2, through a combination of the big names not quite scoring the runs, and the fact that the bowling didn’t quite the pedigree of the batting lineup – not to mention the complete lack of a lower middle order that could finish games for them.
Come PSL 3, the exact same issues persist with Qalandars. They have an explosive top order, that has fired in two of the three matches so far. But there’s nothing in the middle, and the lower-order is nonexistent.
A batting lineup that begins with the likes of Sunil Narine, Brendon McCullum, Fakhar Zaman, and then has Cameron Delport and Umar Akmal – who is yet to come up with any goods at all – will always go berserk up front, but might struggle as it goes down – which is precisely what has been happening to Lahore.
Sohail Akhtar is the only lower-order batsman to show any glimpse of scoring runs, and maybe there’s a case of putting him up and bringing Delport or Akmal further down the order to create the right batting mix.
The shuffles in Qalandars’ starting 11 and the batting order exemplify the fact that they are an unsettled team that is absolutely clueless about what its best combination is. And yet, the fact that everything is being juggled except the actual game plan is the core reason why Qalandars continue to struggle.
However, the problem here is that it mightn’t be too easy to undo it either, since the Qalandars have purchased the personnel in accordance with that particular gung-ho approach.
This has meant that the bowling lineup is average, and the Qalandars will have to continue to rely on a batting lineup that is abysmally failing to put up runs beyond the first six overs.
The other fact is that with McCullum leading the side, the Qalandars have a skipper who epitomises the gung-ho approach and wouldn’t change it for anything – and it turns out, that they don’t quite have the team to change it either.
Hence, one of two things will happen this season. Either Qalandars finally get it right, and then bulldoze upwards through the league table. Or they miss the playoffs for the third season running, resulting in a complete revamp for the next PSL.
