Shakib Al Hasan played in the first match of PSL. His team Peshawar Zalmi won despite not being able to shine with bat and ball. Babar Azam and Koehler-Cadmore won Peshawar. Peshawar Zalmi beat Karachi Kings by just 2 runs after a hard-fought PSL match on Tuesday (February 14). Peshawar scored 199 runs after losing 5 wickets in 20 overs. In response, after 20 overs, Karachi lost the same wicket as Peshawar and scored 197 runs. Karachi won the toss and invited Peshawar to bat. Batting first, Peshawar’s big score came mainly from captain Babar Azam and Tom Kohler-Cadmore’s 81-ball 139-run partnership. Babar Azam played an inning of 68 runs off 46 balls with 7 fours and 1 six. However, Kohler-Cadmore held Rudramurthy with the bat. He played an inning of 92 runs off 50 balls with 6 sixes and 7 fours. When Shakib got a chance to bat on this day, Peshawar had only 2 balls left in the innings. He remained unbeaten with one run off 1 ball.

In response, Karachi got off to a terrible start. Despite scoring runs per over, only 46 runs were lost and 4 wickets were lost. The pair of Shoaib Malik-Imad Wasim brought Karachi back into the match by taking the team’s lead in the fifth wicket pair. They took the team close to victory with a partnership of 131 runs from 74 balls.

The match became difficult for Karachi when Malik got out in the 19th over after scoring 52 runs off 34 balls with 4 fours and 2 sixes. Karachi still needed 23 runs from 10 balls to win. The team needed 16 runs in the last over to win. Imad Wasim tried hard but could not score more than 13 runs. In the end, this all-rounder witnessed a loss of 2 runs from 80 runs off 47 balls with 7 fours and 4 sixes.
Shakib, who last played in PSL in 2017, could not play the first match after 6 years. Although he played for Peshawar last time, he played for Karachi in the first season of PSL. He bowled 3 overs despite not getting a chance to bat properly against the former team.

However, this all-rounder of Tigers failed in that too. He remained wicketless with 32 runs in 3 overs. Each team will play 10 matches in the group stage in the round-robin league system. However, as Bangladesh has a series against England and Ireland, BCB has permitted Shakib to play 5 matches. He has to return home by February 27. England will start the ODI series on March 1.