The most celebrated T20 league of Pakistan is heading towards its business end and all the franchises are striving hard to cement a spot in the final-four. After a break of 24 hours, the action begins once again at the Qaddafi Stadium Lahore where the highly confident Qalandars will lock horns against the spirited Peshawar Zalmi side led by Wahab Riaz.

The two teams are coming into this match after consecutive victories and the Qalandars are looking to continue their momentum against the men in yellow at home. The strong and star-studded side of Peshawar Zalmi is also sitting comfortably at no.2 in the points table but a loss against Qalandars could possible challenge their place in the top-four and make things worse for them.

The Lahore Qalandars are situated at no.5 in the table just ahead of the defending champions and they would certainly try to climb up the chart by defeating the Zalmis. The rise of Lahore has made things interesting as the struggling franchise is back to winning ways and they have put the fortunes of some consistent teams in danger.

The good news for the Peshawar Zalmi fans is that they’re just one victory away from qualifying for the playoffs as the victory against Qalandars will make them the second team to qualify after Multan Sultans. 

Also, if we look at the head to head record of these two teams then the Zalmis are way ahead of the Qalandars as they have managed to beat the Sohail Akhtar led franchise eight times. On the other hand, the Lahore based franchise has only been able to beat the men in yellow once in the entire five-year history of the PSL.

The surface of the Qaddafi Stadium has been pretty helpful for both batsmen and bowlers so far and we have seen high scores getting chased easily. We also saw the Qalandars rolling over the Gladiators and restricting them on 98.

The Lahore Qalandars will rely once again on their top order as the main strikers like Ben Dunk, Chris Lynn and Mohammad Hafeez will surely look to execute their plans against the strong bowling line up of Peshawar.

We might not see a lot of changes in the Lahore Qalandars’ playing XI for today’s clash but the comeback of Chris Lynn is pretty much on the cards. The Peshawar Zalmi opener Kamran Akmal is the highest run getter against the Qalandars with 260 runs to his name whilst Hasan Ali has the most number of wickets (13) for Peshawar Zalmi.

The Zalmis will also rely on their heavily equipped top order as both Kamran Akmal and Tom Banton will surely look to attack the inexperienced bowling line up of Lahore. We might see Haris Rauf coming back for the Qalandars after missing out on a couple of matches.

Peshawar Zalmi Probable Playing XI:
Kamran Akmal (wk), Imam-ul-Haq, Tom Banton, Haider Ali, Shoaib Malik, Liam Livingstone, Carlos Braithwaite, Hasan Ali, Wahab Riaz (C), Yasir Shah, Rahat Ali.

Lahore Qalandars Probable Playing XI:
Fakhar Zaman, Chris Lynn, Mohammad Hafeez, Ben Dunk, Samit Patel, Sohail Akhtar (c), David Wiese, Shaheen Afridi, Salman Irshad/Haris Rauf, Dilbar Hussain, Raja Farzan/Maaz Khan