The National T20 Trophy, Pakistan’s premier domestic T20 tournament has now reached its ultimate destination- the final and last year’s winners Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will face Central Punjab on their quest to back to trophies.
Khyber, which did have a good start to their campaign winning the first game by a whopping 36 runs. They continued their good form and won three of their next four games to remain among the top teams after the end of the Rawalpindi leg of the tournament.
However, three losses in the next four games did put some dent in their aspirations for back to back titles, but the Iftikhar Ahmed led side managed to beat Northern in their last league game and with six wins from 10 games, qualified as the top-ranked team for the semi-finals.
They had similar points to second, third and fourth-ranked Central Punjab, Sindh and Northern, but because of slightly better net run rate, finished top.
In the semi-final, Khyber were brilliant with their batting and bowling and restricted Northern to 156 in the 20 overs. Then with the help of Sahibzada Farhan’s 53 off 39 balls and skipper Iftikhar’s unbeaten 45 got the team to its consecutive finals.
Central Punjab, on the other hand, led initially by Babar Azam, then by Hasan Ali and now by Wahab Riaz, finished with six wins from 10 league games and qualified as the second-ranked team for the semi-finals.
In the semis game, Central beat Sindh comprehensively seven wickets to make it to their first-ever final of the revised T20 tournament.
The final would begin from 08:00 pm IST and you can catch all the live commentary on Cricket Exchange and One Cricket’s website and app.