Lions need massive win to qualify

Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Start time 1600 local (1030 GMT)

It's calculator-time in the Champions League T20, as a victory for Lahore Lions in their last league match will result in the net run-rate deciding whether Lions or Chennai Super Kings progress to the semi-finals. For Lions to qualify, they need to win by a large margin - by around 50 runs if they bat first, or by around the 15th over if they are chasing.

Lions have already been in a similar situation once before in this tournament, when they needed to win their final league game of the qualifying stage. On that occasion, they thumped Sri Lanka's Southern Express to stay alive. Now they are up against Perth Scorchers, who have already been eliminated.

Scorchers have had their share of problems against spin in this tournament - averaging 19.9 against the turning ball compared to 32.37 against pace. They are likely to be tested by the offspin of Mohammad Hafeez and Adnan Rasool, both of whom have strangled the opposition in the CLT20, with both conceding less than 7 an over. The match could well be decided by the battle between Scorchers' batsmen and Lions' spinners.

Lions' supporters will already be disappointed after their second side lost in the final of the domestic Twenty20 final on Sunday. They will hope the first XI gives them something to cheer about.

Lahore Lions WLWLW (completed matches only, most recent first)
Perth Scorchers LLWWW

Nathan Coulter-Nile will be playing only his third game since a five-month break due to a hamstring injury. He looked sharp in the previous game, stifling the hitters of Chennai Super Kings with the new ball, before getting the coveted wicket of MS Dhoni later on. Coulter-Nile has said he wants to make the World Cup squad, and with little over four months to go for the start of that tournament, he needs to string together as many solid performances as he can.

Rarely have players been as important to a team as Mohammad Hafeez is to Lions - he is the side's captain, and has often opened the batting as well as the bowling for them. How much will being reported for a suspect action affect him in the crunch match? With only one score above 20 in five matches in the CLT20, he will also look to provide more with the bat against Scorchers.

Stats and trivia

• Yasir Arafat needs one more wicket to equal Azhar Mahmood's tally of 241 T20 wickets, which will put him joint fourth on the all-time list
• The Chinnaswamy Stadium has now hosted more T20 matches (64) than any other Indian ground, barring the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad (70).