Hyderabad Kingsmen Beat Multan Sultans in PSL 2026 Eliminator and Honestly It Was Never a Contest
Knockout games in T20 cricket are supposed to mess with your head a little. One big over change everything. A dropped catch, a no-ball, a run out off the last ball — that is the stuff eliminator nights are made of. But Gaddafi Stadium on April 29 had none of that drama. Hyderabad Kingsmen showed up, did their job in both departments, and sent Multan Sultans home with 28 balls still unused. Eight wickets. Dominant from start to finish. You could argue it was over before it really began.Multan Batted First and That Did Not Go Well
Multan won the toss and chose to bat. Fair call honestly. Lahore is a flat surface, scores of 180 and above are common there, and if you are chasing in a knockout you are always at the mercy of the target. So batting first made sense on paper.
The problem was the batting did not follow through on that logic.
Smith and Farhan got going initially, looked fluent, and then both were back in the shed before anyone could settle. Philippe followed them soon after, and by the end of the powerplay Multan were already in a hole. Three wickets down before the sixth over is done is not where you want to be when your tournament life depends on this game.
The middle overs got worse. Saim Ayub and Glenn Maxwell bowled with decent control and made scoring look genuinely difficult. No loose deliveries, no free hits in the gaps, just consistent pressure that kept pulling wickets at the wrong moments for Multan. Every time it looked like someone was about to build a partnership, another wicket fell and the rebuilding had to start from scratch.
The final total was 159/9. At Gaddafi. That is below par by a distance.
Shan Masood Tried. He Really Did.
If there was one man keeping Multan even remotely in this game it was their skipper. Shan Masood batted through the chaos, rotated strike when the boundaries were not coming, and then stepped on the gas in the death overs when he had to. His 69 off 46 is the kind of knock that gets lost in a losing cause but deserves more credit than it usually gets.
In the final five overs, Multan scored 56 runs. A big chunk of that was Masood finding the gaps and picking his spots smartly. He looked like a man who understood the situation completely and refused to panic even when everything around him was going wrong. But one good innings cannot cover for the collapse that happened in the middle. When your top three are back early and your middle order cannot build anything lasting, 160 is basically the ceiling.
The Kingsmen bowlers shared six wickets between the pacers, all of them getting decent zip off the surface. There was something in the pitch for the quicks and they used it well.
Then Maaz Sadaqat Happened
The chase started and within about three overs it was already clear this was going to be comfortable. Maaz Sadaqat opened the batting and played like someone who had not got the memo that this was a high-pressure eliminator. He took on the bowlers from the first over, found the gaps, hit over the top when he wanted to, and made 64 off 32 balls look almost casual.
Marnus Labuschagne fell early — a loose shot, caught at cover, very much an avoidable dismissal — but it did not change the mood in the Kingsmen dressing room even slightly. Usman Khan walked out at number three and the two of them just kept going. Usman was brilliant. 64 off 35, three sixes, hitting straight and hard. The partnership between Maaz and Usman took the game completely away from Multan's bowlers who had no answers to offer.
Steven Smith finally got Usman's wicket at long-on but by then the required runs were in the teens. Saim Ayub came in, knocked off the remaining runs without any stress, and the whole thing was done in 15.2 overs.
Byes off the last delivery sealed it. Even the finish was a little anticlimactic.
Where Both Teams Go From Here
Hyderabad Kingsmen now head into Eliminator 2 where they face Lahore United. They will go in with serious confidence after this performance because bowling a side out for 159 on a Lahore pitch and then chasing it with eight wickets in hand is not something many teams can do.
Multan Sultans are done. Their campaign ends here. Turner was honest after the match and said the momentum had already started slipping in the last couple of games before this one. They had won six of their first eight matches and looked like genuine contenders for a while. But the powerplay collapse tonight cost them everything and there was simply no way back from it.
Masood gave it everything. His team did not quite match him tonight, and in knockout cricket that is all it takes.