KARACHI: Nobody would have dared to envisage a cricket match of any format involving two evenly-matched outfits, such as Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) and Habib Bank Limited (HBL), could end up on a surreal note on Tuesday with one side effortlessly making it to the President’s Cup One-day tournament final.

Misbah-ul-Haq, the Pakistan Test and ODI skipper, by his own admission never expected the Younis Khan-led HBL to hand over the first semi-final here at the National Stadium to his SNGPL charges on a platter with an eight-wicket drubbing. The entire match lasted just 59 overs and yielded only 224 runs for the loss of 12 wickets.

The lady luck certainly smiled on SNGPL — who also beat the same opponents to win the first-class President’s Trophy event last January — when Misbah called correctly at the toss — heads — when his favourite side of the coin condemned HBL to bat at the unscheduled starting time of 8:30am which was just for this fixture to accommodate the broadcasting TV channel’s unjust request to ensure the late afternoon period remained free to air live an Indian Premier League game which was being played later the same day.

The wrath of this pre-match agreement between the broadcaster and the cricket board certainly was going to be catastrophic for team batting first because the heavy dose of moisture underneath the pitch takes time to dry out to make life easier for the batsmen.

And so it proved as HBL lost four wickets inside the initial 10-over mandatory powerplay chunk to the SNGPL reliable new-ball partnership of Samiullah Khan Niazi and Asad Ali.Ahmed Shehzad shuffled slightly across the line to Asad and was gone for a golden duck at the start of the second over. Imran Farhat (9) tickled a catch to wicket-keeper Mohammad Rizwan just as he made a belated bid to withdraw his bat against left-armer Samiullah.

The game-changing moment arrived in the sixth over of early morning when quite uncharacteristically and against the run of play, the usually unassuming Asad Shafiq made a foolish attempt to flick Samiullah across the line. The sound of the ball thudding into the stumps told the entire story as shocked Younis watched in horror from the non-striker end as Asad trudged back fir seven-ball duck.

Before this fixture, Asad had been a model of consistency with four successive half centuries and a total of 279 runs for being out just once in the competition.

Shahid Afridi wasn’t expecting to be facing the ball as early as the 10th over, at least not in the later part of his entire career. Here was a golden opportunity for a man who could have made his bat do a lot of talking to get in a good frame of mind for the coming internationals in the UK.

In Bilawal Bhatti’s second over, the hard-hitting all-rounder swatted three boundaries in four balls. But the young paceman had his man in the next over; having made 26 off 38 balls (five fours) in the 32-run stand with Younis, Afridi attempted to hit over the top but found Taufiq Umar taking a nice tumbling catch at deep cover.

Younis, who easily outnumbered his team-mates in terms of crease occupation by hanging in there for 87 minutes, finally fell in the 19th over after making 19 from 52 balls with a brace of boundaries when leg-spinner Yasir Shah lured the ex-Pakistan captain out of the crease briefly. Rizwan, in flash, completed an outstanding piece of stumping.

Abdur Rehman was the joint top-scorer (26 off 43 balls, two fours and one six) with Afridi and had the distinction of stroking the solitary six — when he came down the crease and struck Yasir through the line over the straight hit region — in the innings until he was last man out at 111. Ehsan Adil was the only other to enter double figures for his team as the wickets where shared around.

SNGPL faced no problems in their chase as Mohammad Hafeez cut loose to smash nine boundaries and lifted Rehman for a six in helping himself to 62 off 70 balls after Taufiq was smartly taken by Younis at midwicket off Afridi for a 39-ball 23 with just one four. After Rehman nabbed Hafeez, Azhar Ali and Umar Akmal completed the remaining formalities as Misbah’s team await the winners of the other semi-final between Wapda and National Bank in Friday’s final.

Scoreboard HABIB BANK LIMITED: Imran Farhat c Rizwan b Samiullah    9 Ahmed Shehzad lbw b Asad    0 Younis Khan st Rizwan b Yasir    19 Asad Shafiq b Samiullah    0 Hasan Raza b Asad    6 Shahid Afridi c Taufiq b Bilawal    26 Humayun Farhat c Hafeez b Yasir    8 Fahad Masood c Umar Akmal b Bilawal    1 Abdur Rehman c Taufiq b Bilawal    26 Ehsan Adil c Umar Akmal b Hafeez    11 Aslam Qureshi not out    0 EXTRAS (LB-1, W-3, NB-1)    5 TOTAL (all out, 35.1 overs)    111 FALL OF WKTS: 1-5, 2-11, 3-11, 4-22, 5-54, 6-63, 7-71, 8-73, 9-109. BOWLING: Samiullah Khan Niazi 8-2-17-2 (1w); Asad Ali 8-2-21-2 (1nb); Bilawal Bhatti 7.1-1-31-3; Yasir Shah 6-0-27-2 (2w); Mohammad Hafeez 6-2-14-1. SUI NORTHERN GAS PIPELINES LIMITED: Mohammad Hafeez c Ehsan b Rehman    62 Taufiq Umar c Younis b Afridi    23 Azhar Ali not out    13 Umar Akmal not out    12 EXTRAS (LB-3)    3 TOTAL (for two wkts, 23.5 overs)    113 FALL OF WKTS: 1-70, 2-96. DID NOT BAT: Misbah-ul-Haq, Khurram Shehzad, Mohammad Rizwan, Yasir Shah, Bilawal Bhatti, Samiullah Khan Niazi, Asad Ali. BOWLING: Fahad Masood 4-0-16-0; Ehsan Adil 2-0-19-0; Abdur Rehman 10-2-39-1; Aslam Qureshi 1-0-7-0; Shahid Afridi 6.5-0-29-1. RESULT: Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited won by eight wickets. UMPIRES: Riazuddin and Zameer Haider. TV UMPIRE: Saleem Badar. MATCH REFEREE: Ilyas Khan. OFFICIAL SCORER: Mohammad Ahsan. SECOND SEMI-FINAL: Water and Power Development Authority v National Bank of Pakistan, Thursday.