PSL 2026 - Hunain Shah on final over heroics - 'We had one plan, bowl six yorkers'

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Earlier this week, Hunain Shah told ESPNcricinfo that Hyderabad Kingsmen coach Jason Gillespie had told him to know what delivery he was bowling at the top of his run-up, and commit to it. But on Friday night, from the moment captain Marnus Labuschagne placed his trust, and the ball, into the 22-year-old’s hands to defend five runs in the final over, he knew where each of his six deliveries in the 20th over would end up.

“We had to go in with one plan, bowl six yorkers,” Hunain said at the post-match press conference after Kingsmen defeated Islamabad United by two runs. “We kept it simple. We had to save six runs. We just needed to adjust the line of the yorker, but it had to be a yorker.”

No matter the plan, though, Hunain had been tasked with doing something unprecedented. United needed six to win the Eliminator in the final over; never before in PSL playoffs history had any team defended a target this low in the last over. It has only happened twice in the PSL overall, both in group games.

And in the maelstrom of drama and emotion that followed, it is perhaps easy to forget that the first ball of that over was anything but a yorker. Hunain hit length and directed it wide, but Chris Green, who looked like he was playing a match-winning cameo for United, could not do much with it.

The next five balls, Hunain fired full and fast. He went wide with a couple of balls to keep them away from the left-hander’s arc, first Faheem Ashraf’s and then Imad Wasim’s. But the unerring relentlessness with which he nailed the length suffocated United, who suddenly realised a game they had all but won with 22 runs in the previous over was now being wrenched away from them by Hunain’s hungry hands.

“I’ve worked a lot over the past six months with a view to performing in this PSL,” Hunain said. “I felt whenever I got the chance, I’d perform here because I had a lot of tough times and injuries earlier. This is a result of my hard work.

“I spent a whole week just bowling yorkers, so that I made sure I could nail them when the team needed them.”

“You believe you can execute when you’ve worked on it. If you’re mentally clear, execution becomes easier. I went for six yorkers, set the field accordingly, believed, and did it.”

That week, it turns out, was exceptionally well spent. But the signs of Hunain’s heroics last night were seeded in an encounter much earlier in the PSL, one that felt like it may have lost relevance but assumes a more prescient meaning now. It was Kingsmen’s fourth game of the season, having lost the previous three. They were making a fist of defending a low total against Peshawar Zalmi, with Hunain, in his first game of the season, bowling a near-perfect 18th over that allowed just two runs.

Needing to keep out 14 in the final over, he threw his lot in with the yorkers again, just as he had done in the previous over. Marginal errors saw one turn into a low full toss, another into a half-volley. Zalmi won off the final delivery, leaving the young fast bowler in tears.

“I first played against Peshawar Zalmi,” he recalled. “I couldn’t defend the runs. It’s not unusual that you do bowl one or two inaccurate balls.”

Kingsmen’s victory today sets up a final against Zalmi, the team against whom Hunain suffered a heartbreak. Zalmi have by far been the best team of the tournament, with their success built in large part on Kusal Mendis and Babar Azam’s form with the bat, and Sufiyan Muqeem’s with the ball. But Hunain believed the diversity of matchwinners in a Kingsmen squad that has all the momentum made them trickier to contend with.

“We’ll try to play well as a team. I’ve mentioned that everyone is performing in our team. Someone or other is standing out, and it’s a different person almost every game. When you’ve got so many match-winners, then you don’t run into too many difficulties, and it’s very difficult to plan against us.

“If we’re planning against another team, we know it’s the top two or any particular individuals, and we plan against them. But it’s difficult against us because from top to bottom, many different players have put in match-winning performances. Everyone’s performed, and it’s very difficult to plan against such a team. We’ll keep things simple in the final and pray for the best.”

Among those consoling Hunain after that group game against Zalmi was Labuschagne, who has emerged as one of the more fascinating characters in the league this season, and one who has truly taken the franchise and the league, to heart. On Friday, when Hunain’s final, near-perfect delivery sealed the win, it was Labuschagne who found himself overcome with emotion, running the length of the field before throwing his arms around an equally charged Hunain, giving his fast bowler a kiss and a cuddle before Hunain was lifted into the air by his team-mates.

For Hunain, no matter how tall the odds, though, belief was always there. “You believe you can execute when you’ve worked on it. If you’re mentally clear, execution becomes easier. I went for six yorkers, set the field accordingly, believed, and did it.”

Danyal Rasool is ESPNcricinfo’s Pakistan correspondent. @Danny61000

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