Warner, Vince power Kings into playoffs; Babar's 94 for Zalmi in vain

There were fireworks during the innings break to celebrate the resumption of the PSL, but they somewhat receded into the background compared to the pyrotechnics in each innings. A high-scoring thriller of a contest saw Karachi Kings seal qualification to the playoffs, edging out Peshawar Zalmi in a game where 237 played 214. While batting seemed almost insouciantly straightforward - as it often is in Rawalpindi in T20 cricket - David Warner's 50-ball 86 had just enough support from his team-mates to outshine Babar Azam's 49-ball 94.

The first ball of the contest was a false dawn, when Luke Wood produced a ripping inswinger to clean up Ben McDermott. Warner and James Vince picked up where they had left off in the earlier part of this tournament as they flayed the Zalmi bowling. Wood, who remarkably bowled three powerplay overs to register figures of 1 for 14, found none of his team-mates able to maintain the pressure from the other end; the other three overs in the first six went for 43.

An eight-run seventh over suggested Zalmi would come back into the game, but once more, it was misdirection. Ali Raza and Ahmed Daniyal copped further punishment before Saim Ayub and Hussain Talat bore the brunt of Warner's onslaught. While Wood returned to produce another brilliant over, breaking the partnership by dismissing Vince, his 2 for 19 stood in sharp contrast to the carnage around him.

It was carnage that was about to get decisively worse as Zalmi lost their discipline completely in the final two overs. Raza, who endured a horror day, bowled a no-ball in the penultimate over, one that was littered with inaccurate bowling and decorated by six after six. Khushdil Shah and Mohammad Nabi smashed four of them before two fours and as many sixes in Daniyal's final over saw 52 runs come off the final two overs. Khushdil smashed an unbeaten 43 off 15, Raza and Daniyal combined to concede 126 in eight overs.

Zalmi were expected to come out all guns blazing, and they duly did so. The early dismissal of Mohammad Haris was followed up by a second-wicket onslaught from Babar and Saim Ayub, Zalmi getting 59 in the powerplay. They were ahead of Kings at that stage, and would remain so right up until the penultimate over, but the suffocating pressure of an ever-increasing asking rate never quite let up. Ayub's return to form was welcome, Babar's sensational knock at a strike rate his talent should allow him to replicate more frequently was a delight. However, the death overs' carnage in the first innings always coloured the chase with a sense of heroic failure rather than unlikely glory.

The first sign of the wheels coming off was in the form of a breakthrough Abbas Afridi produced, his slower delivery undoing Ayub three runs short of a half-century. It brought Tom Kohler-Cadmore to the crease, whose second-ball six belied the stuttering innings he would eventually produce. The partnership with his captain yielded 62, but Kohler-Cadmore only managed 20 in 15 deliveries, even as Babar was turning on the style from the other end, having raced past Warner's score, sitting imperiously on 87 off 45.

But three wickets fell in the next 11 balls. Mir Hamza snared Kohler-Cadmore before Afridi returned to get rid of Max Bryant. Three balls later, defeat was all but confirmed when Babar desperately scrambled back in a bid to get on strike, and ended up short of his crease, and six runs short of a deserved hundred.

Zalmi soldiered on bravely, producing 28 in the final two overs, but the Kings had secured victory, and a ticket to the playoffs in Lahore. Zalmi, meanwhile, go into a virtual knockout against Lahore Qalandars on Sunday night.