We pretended we were defending 130: Shaheen Afridi

Fakhar Zaman punished Islamabad United for letting him off twice by belting a swashbuckling century that earned defending champions Lahore Qalandars a place in the 15 March HBL PSL 8 Qualifier in Lahore with a thumping 119 runs victory in front of another full-house at the Pindi Cricket Stadium on Thursday.

Qalanders skipper, while talking in the post-match conference, said that they went in the with mindset of defending 130 runs, despite posting 226 for 5.

"Fakhar played a brilliant innings, credit to him, whenever he scores big, we win," Afridi said.

"We have belief in our bowling that we can defend. We were talking in the huddle before we went out, that we have 130 to defend and we went about with that mindset," he added.

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Upon being asked about the dropped catch by Haris Rauf, the skipper backed his teammate.

"It happens in the game, Haris is a good fielder [on Haris dropping a return catch]. We will look to give bench players a go and give the main players a rest for the next game," said Afridi.