After disastrous 2022, Karachi Kings eye PSL final

KARACHI: Having won the PSL trophy in 2020 and reaching the 2021 edition’s playoffs Karachi Kings were extremely off colour last season in which they won just one game from their quota of ten outings.

Kings’ South African head coach Johan Botha wants his brigade to get back to the playoffs in PSL-8 which begins next week.

“We need to get back to the playoffs and give ourselves a chance to play those final matches because the last two years Karachi have not even been close to that,” Botha said. “The last time I was with Karachi Kings in the HBL PSL 5, we actually won that tournament. I was there with Dean Jones who was the head coach,” he recalled.

“We need to establish ourselves as one of the better teams in the tournament. That obviously is going to take some work from being last probably the last couple of years, only having won one game during PSL-7,” said Botha, who has also served as head coach of Islamabad United and Multan Sultans.

“That is a long way to go to turn that around. So that is certainly the aim is for us to be a contending team.

“Obviously teams have gone past us in the last two years and we have some serious work to do but we also have a good squad. We have a really experienced squad. We have probably gone for the most experience in this game that I have seen, and we have got to bank on that. We have to hope that those guys perform for us on the big stage and can get this team back to winning ways,” he said.

“From the last year, which is obviously the freshest one in memory they won one game and that was the ninth game. So we have got to try and start well in Karachi. That is obviously a bit of an advantage, I would say to play at home.

“You want to start well at home. I suppose the crowds will be full again as the Covid pandemic is over. We have to make the most of starting at home, starting well and get some early momentum. That is what you want to do in a tournament like this. You need to get momentum early,” he said.

“I hope that with the international players we have picked, plus having retained eight local players we have got a strong enough squad to start well, then keep that momentum and get us into the playoffs. And that will put us two or three games away from winning a tournament,” he said.

“It sounds simple saying it like that but this team has some work to do. We have been poor the last two years and we have to pull things together and turn it around. We have to do it now.

“We have filled Babar Azam’s spot with James Vince, who has played really well for Multan. But is Babar Azam’s moving to Peshawar Zalmi obviously a big loss? He is a big player and he is a big character in the tournament and he draws big crowds into the stadium. We have tried to replace him with James Vince. Hopefully, we can substitute that. Vince has done really well when he has played in the HBL PSL,” he said.

Botha said they would try to get the best of hard-hitting batsman Haider Ali.

“I think our biggest player and the player we probably need to get the most out of is Haider Ali. When he was with Peshawar Zalmi in the first couple of years, he was excellent. I thought this guy could be one of the best T20 players in the world,” he said.

“So hopefully we can get the best out of Haider Ali and if he has a really good tournament, we will be good as a team. He is dangerous as a player and can take the game away from the opposition. The management is looking to get the best out of him.

“Then Shoaib Malik can follow that. Qasim Akram is a great emerging player. We also have Matthew Wade and a bunch of international all-rounders in James Fuller, Ben Cutting and Andrew Tye. Hopefully we can fire at the top with the bat. In a tournament like this, your top six have to fire, get the runs and get it quick enough or you are always going to struggle.

“We need to establish ourselves as one of the better teams in the tournament,” Botha said.