PSL 2023 Multan ruthlessly expose Lahore's weaknesses in one-sided qualifier.

The legendary Dutch player and former Barcelona manager Johan Cruyff used to say his team must make sure that the worst players in the opposition team get the ball the most. Cruyff, who had a bigger influence on football than any other man in the sport's history, knew that in team sports you are only as strong as your weakest player. The easiest way to break a chain is to target its weakest link and sport teams are no different.

Of all team sports, cricket has always been the most individualistic, the game essentially boiling down to individual battles between one bowler and one batsman at a time. While teams could once consistently rely on the sheer brilliance of their best players to win them games, the advent of T20 cricket has changed that - the room to hide your worst players decreases as the importance of every delivery increases.

Now the team that mitigates its weaknesses will come out on top more often than the team that augments its strengths. The 2023 edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) has highlighted this more forcefully than ever before.

The latter stages of the tournament's group stages in Pindi were dominated by the batsmen in record-breaking fashion as individual, team, and league records were shattered one after the other.

The Multan and Quetta match then contrived to break some of the format's record, their combined 515 runs in 40 overs being the highest-ever runs tally in a T20 match. In the same game, Usman Khan's fastest-ever PSL century off 36 deliveries was also the fastest-ever in T20 history in terms of balls played in the innings.

Usman reached his century after only 8.2 overs had been bowled, in other words a player was celebrating his century after only 50 balls had been bowled in the entire innings.

It is no coincidence that in this scoring extravaganza of a season where the bowlers have largely been dominated by the batsmen, the top two sides were the ones that could count on the tournament's most consistently lethal bowlers. Multan Sultans have the top two wicket-takers of the tournament, with Abbas Afridi (23) and Ihsanullah (21) neck and neck in the top wicket-taker's race.

Lahore bowlers meanwhile occupy the other three spots in the top five, while these two teams monopolise the top seven spots on the list. The remaining three spots in the top ten belong to the tournament's third-best team Islamabad United.

Conditions in Lahore were different from those in Pindi. The Gaddafi pitch on Wednesday...