PSL 2022: Who Will Go on to Lift the Title?

The Pakistan Super League, also known as the PSL, is an entertaining T20 competition that is Pakistan’s equivalent to the Indian Premier League, although it is nowhere near as big and nowhere near as lucrative. It was established back in 2015, and the seventh edition is ongoing now and nearing its conclusion. In this article, we are going to take a look at what has been happening in this tournament and then give our prediction as to who will win the final.

Pakistan Super League 2022: What Has Happened So Far?

In the Group Stage of the competition, the standout team was the Multan Sultans by quite a distance. Each team played ten matches in the Group Stage, playing the other five franchises twice, and the Multan Sultans only lost one of them, finishing top of the table with 18 points, six points above the Lahore Qalandars in second place. They won their Play-Off match quite easily by 28 runs, and will now compete for the title in the final on Sunday the 27th of February. 

It is no surprise that they have been performing so well and have made it to the final because they have two of the top runscorers in the tournament – Mohammad Rizwan has scored 532 runs with an average of 76.00 from 11 matches, while Shan Masood has score 459 runs with an average of 41.72 from the 11 matches that he has played. Anyone who has done a bit of PSL betting on the Multan Sultans over the last few weeks or so would have made quite a tidy profit, that is for sure. 

Another team that performed very well in the Group Stage is the Lahore Qalandars, who were the only team to get a win against the Multan Sultans, and it was a big win at that. The Lahore Qalandars scored 182 runs from their 20 overs, thanks mostly to a wonderful 60 from the competition’s top batsman, Fakhar Zaman – he has notched up 584 runs from 11 matches at an average of 53.09, including one magnificent century. Throughout the Group Stage, they won six matches and lost four to finish with 12 points on the board. They are not yet in the final though because they have to play an Eliminator match against Islamabad United. 

Islamabad United managed to sneak into the fourth and final play-off spot on Net Run Rate. They managed to amass just eight points from the 10 matches that they played, but it was enough, and they now have a chance to make it to the final. There is one person that they can thank for their progression throughout the tournament, and this is Shadab Khan, who has been the best bowler in the tournament, collecting 18 wickets at an average of 10.00 from the seven innings that he has bowled in.

The other spot in the Play-Offs went to Peshawar Zalmi, who finished third in the table with six wins and four defeats to their name. They only missed out on second place due to the fact that they had a poorer Net Run Rate. They have had a couple of stand out performers throughout the competition, and when it comes to their batting, Shoaib Malik has been their best performer with 401 runs from 11 games at an average of 44.55. In the bowling department, Salman Irshad has been a bit of a revolution, collecting 15 wickets from eight matches at an average of 17.60. They will not have a chance to improve on these records and you will not be able to do any more online cricket betting on them though since they were knocked out in the Play-Offs by Islamabad United.

Who Will Win this year’s PSL?

So, with just two matches left of the PSL 2022 schedule, we already know one of the teams that will be competing in the final, and that is the Multan Sultans. The team that they will be competing against in the final will be one of Lahore Qalandars or Islamabad United. 

Obviously, in order to make match predictions on who will win the PSL, we need to know who will be playing in the final.  Since the Eliminator 2 will be played on Friday afternoon/evening, we need to predict the result of this one too. We do not think that there is much of a difference in the teams’ batting strength, but we do feel that the Qalandars have been too reliant on Fakar Zaman throughout the competition – if he fails, then they might struggle to post a solid score to win the game. Islamabad United have a quality bowling attack, and we think this will end up being the difference between the two sides. So, with all of this in mind, we think that the final will be between the Multan Sultans and Islamabad United. 

To be honest, we do not think it matters who makes it to the final to play the Multan Sultans because we think that the Sultans will be too strong for either of the two teams that are left. Yes, the Qalandars managed to beat the Sultans in the Group Stage, but then they met again in the Play-Offs and the Sultans won the match with considerable ease.  

The Multan Sultans won this title for the first time in 2021 and given the way that they have performed throughout this competition, if we were to make a bet on cricket online, we would have to put our money on the Sultans to retain their title. We also took the time to speak to cricketonlinebetting.in, a quality cricket betting website in India, to ask them their opinion and they agreed with us about the Multan Sultans winning the title.