Remember that crazy night in Lahore?

Lahore Qalandars vs Multan Sultans, PSL final, Lahore, 2023

Lahore Qalandars won by one run

The cliché goes that great games must have everything, but this one doesn't rank this high on our list because of its quality as much as its sheer madness. As the scorecard may indicate, it was a run fest despite one side having the two highest wicket-takers in the tournament while the other side possessed Rashid Khan, Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf and Zaman Khan. Each team also had power-hitters at the top of their game, though Lahore Qalandars lost four wickets for 17 midway through their innings, and Multan Sultan four for 20.

Afridi and Rauf combined to concede 100 runs across their eight overs. Kieron Pollard's strike rate (118.7) was lower than that of any of his team-mates in the top six. Oh, and Afridi smashed an unbeaten 44 off 15 balls, including a last-ball six that took his team to exactly 200, every run of which they ended up needing as Sultans finished with 199 when Khushdil Shah was run-out scampering to tie the game.

It was frenetic, liquid T20 franchise cricket in front of a heaving home crowd at Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium that allowed Qalandars to become the only side to defend a PSL title.

Qalandars were something of a laughing stock in the early years of the PSL, finishing bottom from 2016 to 2019, while for Sultans, this was their third straight final. Qalandars' vulnerability lay in the fact that while they had the best bowling attack in the league and top-order hitters in Fakhar Zaman and Abdullah Shafique, they had limited firepower in the middle. Things played out true to type at the start of the final, when Shafique's blistering 40-ball 65 got them flying, but once Usama Mir began to work his way through the side, Qalandars' soft underbelly stood fully exposed.

It was Qalandars' second consecutive PSL title Aamir Qureshi / © AFP/Getty Images

Four wickets in 17 balls for as many runs brought out Afridi, at No. 7, in the 15th over, earlier than his side would have liked, but Sultans' bowlers missed their lines routinely, allowing him to hoick through his favourite cow-corner arc, and a scarcely believable passage of play meant 88 runs came off the final 35 deliveries.

However, Sultans' batting order was more than capable of taking down the target, getting to 89 off the first eight overs, and it took the might of Rashid to slow them down. By the time he was done, having removed Mohammad Rizwan and Rilee Rossouw and conceded only 26, Sultans' asking rate had risen to 11.

The game appeared to have been put out of Sultans' reach completely with a three-wicket 18th over from Afridi that brought the equation to 35 off 12 with seven wickets down. But Khushdil Shah and Multan's Afridi, Abbas, severely punished a wayward penultimate over from Rauf for 22 runs. It was left to Zaman to shut Sultans out in the final over, as he had done in the season's opening game - same teams, identical result.

Zaman took the final down to the final ball, with four required. Khushdil, who faced the final ball in that first game, had struck it for four then, but here, he only managed to squeeze it to cow corner before haring off for as many as they could run. Two was all they completed before the bails at the non-striker's end were removed, and while Qalandars' players stormed the playing area, many on both sides also broke down in tears.

Every PSL final until this one had been heavily one-sided, but here, the league threw up a denouement to rival any there's ever been.

Danyal Rasool is ESPNcricinfo's Pakistan correspondent. @Danny61000

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