PIA meet Redco in one-day final today

Lahore, Oct 9: Two Test pacemen Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, who had been leading the Pakistan pace attack in international cricket for a number of years, will be leading rival teams in day and night final of the National One-Day Cricket Tournament at the Qadhafi Stadium on Sunday.

Wasim Akram will be captaining the PIA team in his hometown. It includes many experienced Test stars and some newly-inducted young players. The rejuvenated Redco team will be led by Waqar Younis which also has some experienced Test players and a few youngsters, who will make the final a well-fought affair.

Test umpires Mian Muhammad Aslam and Athar Zaidi will supervise the all-important match of the tournament. Syed Najmus Saeed will be the scorer and former first-class cricketer Ali Zia will be the referee. Pakisna Cricket Board (PCB) ad hoc committee chairman Mujib-ur-Rahman Khan will give away the prizes at the conclusion of the final on Sunday evening. The match will begin at 2:30 pm and the first session will continue till 6 pm. After a break of 45 minutes, the second session will start at 6:45 pm and conclude at 10:15 pm.

The Qadhafi Stadium pitch looks full of runs. The PIA batting looks strong in presence of experienced players like Moin Khan, Wasim Akram, Zahid Fazal, Azhar Mahmood, Ghulam Ali, Asif Mujtaba and Rizwan-uz-Zaman. The pace attack will be led by Wasim Akram and include Azhar Mahmood and Nadeem Afzal. The team includes off-spinner Shoaib Malik and left-arm spinners Asif Mujtaba and Nadeem Khan (elder brother of Moin Khan).

Main strength of the Redco side lies in its bowling which will be led by the redoubtable paceman Waqar Younis and has pacemen Shabbir Ahmad, Waqas Ahmad and Yasir Arafat. Its trump-card will be the diminutive right-arm leg-spinner, who spun the Redco team to a resounding win in the semi-final against the National Bank (NBP) side in the semi-final held at the same venue on Friday.

Its batting has some talented youngsters like Naveed Qureshi Bayazid Khan, Ahmar Saeed, Hasnain Qayyum and Hafeez Qureshi.