ISLAMABAD: Quetta Gladiators could not qualify for the final teams who will play the semi finals. hey had to win all the remaining matches which they could not after playing poorly against Multan Sultan. Legendary Captain Sarfraz tried his best with his team mates bu the performance remained poor.
Quetta Gladiators coach Moin Khan has rued the inconsistency in availability of foreign players throughout the season after his side was eliminated from the race to reach the play-offs of Pakistan Super League (PSL) 6.
The Gladiators were outclassed by Multan Sultans Wednesday night as the former champions were bowled out for 73, chasing a target of 184.
Khan agreed that his side played poor cricket throughout the season and insisted that he won’t give any excuses for it, but it didn’t fall short of the reasons that led to such dismissal performance by the Quetta Gladiators.
“I won’t give any excuses, we played poorly,” Khan said.
“We couldn’t get our combination right. We kept losing our important players ahead of every game which broke our momentum. We earlier had Gayle, then he left. We had Qais, who won a game for us but then the league was suspended and then in this leg, we lost Andre Russell and Faf du Plessis in back to back matches. This dented us,” he said.
But Khan believes we need to realize that others had to take responsibility as well. “It becomes very difficult when players don’t perform with consistency,” said the head coach of Quetta Gladiators.
The side could win only two of the nine matches it played in the PSL and there was hardly any remarkable performance by any Gladiators’ player in the season.
Khan highlighted that players lacked game awareness which cost his side important matches.
“This is top level cricket and players should know what is expected from them. Game awareness was missing in some youngsters and they repeated the same mistakes. Players must learn to perform according to the situation, it is important to learn from their mistakes if they want to do well in their career. It is important to have game awareness,” he said.
Following the defeat, Khan said that the team now has nothing to lose and announced that the Gladiators will provide an opportunity to those who are still waiting. He, however, hoped to end the tournament on a positive note.
“In the last match, we will try to test those players who have yet to play a game or didn’t get enough chances, so they can showcase their talent. We have nothing to lose, but the match could be important for any youngster,” he said.
“We will try to win the last match and end the tournament on a positive note for the Gladiators.” Khan concluded.
