KARACHI, Pak­istan– West In­dies Twen­ty20 star Akeal Ho­sein pro­duced a gut­sy all-round ef­fort but it went in vain as his Quet­ta Glad­i­a­tors went down by 39 runs to Obed Mc­Coy’s Is­lam­abad Unit­ed in the first elim­i­na­tor of the Pak­istan Su­per League on Fri­day.

The 30-year-old first grabbed two for 34 from four overs of left-arm spin to help re­strict Is­lam­abad to 174 for nine from their 20 overs, af­ter they had opt­ed to bat first at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

Ho­sein then smashed an 18-ball 31 as Glad­i­a­tors slumped to 135 all out in the 19th over, left-arm seam­er Mc­Coy con­jur­ing up a stingy spell of one for 13 from three overs.

While the de­feat end­ed Glad­i­a­tors so­journ in the com­pe­ti­tion, Is­lam­abad will have an­oth­er crack at the fi­nal when they take on Dar­ren Sam­my’s Pe­shawar Zal­mi in the sec­ond elim­i­na­tor on Sat­ur­day.

New Zealan­der Mar­tin Gup­till led Is­lam­abad’s ear­ly as­sault, top-scor­ing with 56 off 47 balls with five fours and a six, as he put on 51 for the first wick­et with En­glis­man Alex Hales (23) and a fur­ther 51 for the sec­ond wick­et with Agha Salman (31).

Ho­sein made key strikes, how­ev­er, as Is­lam­abad lost sev­en wick­ets for 56 runs to de­cline at the back end of the in­nings.

In re­ply, Glad­i­a­tors had their top or­der wrecked by left-arm spin­ner Imad Wasim (3-12) as they crashed to an ir­repara­ble 16 for five in the fifth over.

The left-hand­ed Ho­sein ar­rived at num­ber sev­en to blast two fours and three six­es and fu­el a des­per­ate 52-run sixth wick­et part­ner­ship with top-scor­er Omair Yousuf, who made ex­act­ly 50 off 37 balls.

When Ho­sein was trag­i­cal­ly run out at the start of the 11th, Omair added 41 for the eighth wick­et with Mo­ham­mad Amir (23) but the stand was not enough to sal­vage the run chase.

CMC