The 19th season of IPL, the world’s biggest T20 league, has started and two high scoring matches have been seen within two days. Veterans like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have entertained the fans with their amazing batting. At the same time, T20 league is also being played in the neighboring country Pakistan, in which some ruckus is taking place. While on the very first day of the season, the color of the ball changed in the middle of the match, now a case of tampering with the match ball has come to light, due to which the result of the match changed. This happened with Lahore Qalandars, the defending champion of the league and captained by Shaheen Shah Afridi, who had to bear the brunt of their mistake.
This shocking incident was seen in the sixth match of PSL 2026 in the match between Lahore Qalandars and Karachi Kings. Karachi Kings had a target of only 129 runs but Lahore bowlers made it difficult for them to reach the target with a strong performance. In such a situation, the matter reached till the last over, in which Karachi needed 14 runs in the last over, which was not going to be easy at all.
Caught tampering with the ball
Fast bowler Haris Rauf took charge for the last over but before he could start bowling, the umpires stopped the match and decided to change the ball. Seeing this, Lahore captain Shaheen Afridi came to express his displeasure but then the umpires imposed a penalty on his team. The umpires took this decision because they found Lahore guilty of ball tampering. That means Lahore players had tried to change the ball from its normal position, which would have provided them some help.
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All this happened before the start of the 19th over, when Shaheen, Haris Rauf and Fakhar Zaman were discussing something. Then Fakhar took the ball in his hand and was seen doing something on it. It seemed as if he was scratching the ball with his nails. The umpire noticed this and decided to change the ball. Lahore was also punished for this crime and the umpire imposed a penalty of 5 runs on the team and also changed the ball. The video of this entire incident also went viral on social media.
The team suffered a loss
The effect of this was that Karachi lost 5 runs from its target and now the team needed only 9 runs from 6 balls. Although Rauf took the wicket on the very first ball, the new batsman who came to the crease ended the match by hitting a four and a six on the next two balls. This was Karachi’s second consecutive victory. After the match, captain Shaheen denied having any knowledge of ball tampering and said that he would discuss it in the dressing room.