KARACHI: At least on paper the First XI five-day decider of the revamped Quaid-e-Azam Trophy seems to a battle between David versus Goliath as title hopefuls Northern face the prospects of confronting the star-studded Central Punjab at the National Stadium here on Friday.

Despite Northern’s resurgence at the backend of the 30-match league phase, Central Punjab hold all the aces and the return of their appointed skipper Babar Azam and that of Pakistan Test captain Azhar Ali makes their batting almost invincible.

Both Babar and Azhar had excellent preparations for the final with centuries at the weekend against Sri Lanka during the second innings of the second Test which Pakistan won by 263 runs to win the historic home series 1-0 last Monday.

Babar, who only figured the first-class season opener before heading off on Pakistan duty, will be sighting his eyes on a fourth century in last five matches after having scored one in the Brisbane Test against Australia and two more during the Sri Lanka series.

The returning Central Punjab warned his charges against treating Northern lightly.

“At any form of sport, underestimating the opposition more than often cost you dearly. We may be very, very strong as a team but Northern had performed brilliantly to be here in the final,” Babar told a media conference on Thursday. “We just afford to be complacent because this is the final where anything could happen during five days. Maybe, they don’t have the batting prowess like us, but their Northern stands out.”

Two of Central Punjab’s three victories were against Northern at the Iqbal Stadium in Faisalabad. In late September, the margin of win was an innings and exactly 100 runs. And whey faced each other in early November Central Punjab outgunned Northern by 204 runs, while Balochistan also suffered innings and 12-run drubbing at the hands of Central Punjab.

Northern’s journey to the final was eventful. For the first half of the championship, their head coach Mohammad Wasim was left wondering as several of his key players were away on national duty.

But the former Pakistan batsman never lost faith in the fighting qualities of his charges who somehow garnered enough strength to storm up the ranks, a virtue which was highlighted by captain Nauman Ali’s assessment of his side.

“Yeah, we have got wonderful team spirit going in the team throughout our campaign,” Nauman told reporters. “We are happy to go the final as underdogs because I fell they [Central Punjab] will be under more pressure since we’ve nothing to lose.”

Nauman, the 33-year-old slow left-armer from Sanghar, is the leading wicket-taker this season with 52 while the next in the lost are the Central Punjab duo of Zafar Gohar (38 wickets) and Test off-spinner Bilal Asif (32).

Salman Butt, the former Pakistan captain, and ex-Test wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal have carried Central Punjab’s batting on their shoulders with both topping 800-run mark.

Northern owed their progression to Zeeshan Malik and Faizan Riaz, who have been the chief run-getters for them with more than 700 runs.

Teams (from):

CENTRAL PUNJAB: Babar Azam (captain), Salman Butt, Ahmed Shehzad, Azhar Ali, Umar Akmal, Abdullah Shafiq, Kamran Akmal, Faheem Ashraf, Zafar Gohar, Bilal Asif, Waqas Maqsood, Usman Salahuddin, Aizaz Cheema, Ali Shan, Ehsan Adil, Mohammad Saad.

NORTHERN: Nauman Ali (captain), Umar Amin, Haider Ali, Zeeshan Malik, Ali Sarfraz, Faizan Riaz, Sarmad Bhatti, Shoaib Ahmed Minhas, Rohail Nazir, Hammad Azam, Sohail Tanvir, Raza Hasan, Mohammad Musa Khan, Waqas Ahmed, Sadaf Hussain, Jamal Anwar.

Umpires: Ahsan Raza and Asif Yaqoob.

TV umpire: Rashid Riaz.

Match referee: Iftikhar Ahmed.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2019