Final of the Fazal Mahmood National Club Cricket Championship 2017-18
Final
17-8-2108
LCCA Ground, Lahore
Towne Cricket Club Sialkot 185 all out in 49.5 overs (Tabraiz Butt 55, 3x4s, 114 balls, Bilal Asif 45, 2x4s,4x6s, 39 balls, Mir Hamza 4-17, Anwar Ali 4-25)
Pakistan Cricket Club Karachi 189-2 in 32.3 overs (Ramiz Raja Jnr 55, 6x4s, 1x6, 66 balls, Asad Shafiq 53*, 4x4s, 3x6s, 40 balls Ali Asad 70*, 4x4s, 1x6, 90balls Mohammad Imran 1-34, Sohaib Ullah 1-27)
Result: Pakistan Cricket Club Karachi won the final by 8 wickets
Prize Money:
Winner: Pakistan Cricket Club Karachi 300,000
Runners-up: Towne Cricket Club Sialkot 200,000
Player of the final: Mir Hamza (Pakistan Cricket Club, Karachi)
Best Batsman of the Tournament: Sajid Iqbal (Bahawalpur)
Best Bowler of the Tournament: Hammal (Panjgur)
Best Wicket Keeper of the Tournament: Ikram Hussain (Mirpur, AJK)
Best Fielder of the Tournament: Zeeshan Gul (Hyderabad)
Brief History of the Tournament
The PCB has organized the biggest ever tournament in the history of Pakistan's cricket, and probably the biggest in the history of cricket in the shape of Fazal Mahmood Club Cricket Championship. Overall this project is a game-changer to revolutionize the cricketing system in Pakistan by linking grassroots cricket to performance-based selection.
Not only that, but by mobilizing so many cricketers and clubs, the PCB’s Game Development has been able to rejuvenate club cricket nationwide. The master plan is to link this tournament with under-16, under-19 and regional selection in the long run. This tournament could also be used for club scrutiny in the future, thus making the most fundamental and profound change to the domestic cricket structure in 71 years.
The tournament catered to 57,155 participants registered in the cricketing system comprising of around 2896 club cricket teams from the whole of Pakistan, played over 2300 matches and over 9000 U-19 players participated. Moreover, 1100 umpires, and 900 scorers were utilized in the tournament. Over 600 centuries were also scored in the tournament.
Statistically, a total of 15557 catches were taken, 14568 balls went out of the rope (sixes). 81474 balls went for fours (boundaries). 33,864 wickets were taken. A total of 17200 bowlers bowled in matches. PCB has developed a huge database of registered players and clubs, club officials. All this data, along with match data is uploaded into publicly available software that PCB recently developed in-house.
The national club cricket tournament is basically a performance assessment tool that can identify and pick any category of player through a simple click on the computer, based purely on statistics. To conclude, this tournament is the base of the cricketing system in Pakistan, because Clubs are to cricketers what universities are to students.
