PSL 1 (2016)-Ab Khel Ke Dikha | Ali Zafar
Verdict: The Gold Standard Nobody Has Matched
Let’s be honest about something uncomfortable: Ali Zafar nailed it on the first try, and every subsequent anthem has spent a decade trying to reach that bar. Ab Khel Ke Dikha was electric, punchy, patriotic, and stadium-ready. It had the rare quality of sounding like it was written for cricket rather than about a vague concept of winning. The hook was memorable, the production was clean, and it gave the Pakistan Super League an identity before the league had even established one on the field.
The cruel irony is that this inaugural anthem set expectations so high that every committee since has chased that lightning-in-a-bottle, usually with disastrous results.
PSL 2 (2017)- Ab Khel Jamay Ga | Ali Zafar
Verdict: Peak PSL. Nothing Before or After Touches It.
If the first anthem was great, the second was arguably the greatest cricket anthem Pakistan has ever produced. Ab Khel Jamay Ga became a cultural phenomenon with twenty million views on the official PSL YouTube channel. It’s the anthem fans reflexively hum when someone says “PSL.” Years later, when newer anthems disappoint, and they almost always do, the internet collectively dusts off this track as the measuring stick.
The song had soul and swagger. It sounded like Pakistan. Concise, with no identity crisis or forced genre-blending. Just Ali Zafar, at his best, delivering something timeless.
Enjoy it. The decline starts next year.
PSL 3 (2018)- Dil Se Jaan Laga De | Ali Zafar
Verdict: When Familiarity Breeds Contempt
By PSL 3, the decision to return to Ali Zafar was a safe one, perhaps too safe. Dil Se Jaan Laga De isn’t a bad song. It’s a perfectly competent, thoroughly forgettable one. It recycled the energy of its predecessors without adding anything new. The formula was becoming visible: Ali Zafar, anthem-style production, cricket imagery, patriotic crescendo. Fine. Perfectly fine. But “fine” is how you describe airport food, not the cultural pulse of a nation’s sporting event.
The writing was on the wall: PSL’s anthem strategy was already running on fumes by year three.
PSL 4 (2019)- Khel Deewano Ka | Fawad Khan ft. Young Desi
Verdict: Brave Misfire
Here’s where things got interesting ,and not in a good way. The decision to bring in Fawad Khan (actor first, musician incidentally) and pair him with Young Desi was either a stroke of creative courage or a catastrophic miscalculation, depending on your tolerance for experimentation.
Khel Deewano Ka tried to do something different with its blend of pop, rap, and contemporary elements. Its attempt at edginess and modern appeal led to an unclear genre identity. The track was pulled between pop production and rap, resulting in neither a traditional cricket anthem nor a seamless pop or rap collaboration. Fawad Khan’s vocal style leaned toward pop but lacked the commanding presence often needed for stadium anthems, leaving the song unfocused in its genre.
The experiment was noted. The lesson was apparently not learned.
PSL 5 (2020)- Tayyar Hain | Ali Azmat, Arif Lohar, Asim Azhar, Haroon
Verdict: Committee Music at Its Finest (Worst)
This is what happens when you try to solve a creative problem by stacking star musicians from different genres without a cohesive vision. PSL 5 assembled a supergroup: Ali Azmat (rock), Arif Lohar (folk), Asim Azhar (pop), and Haroon (rock/pop). But instead of creating genre fusion, the combination resulted in a disjointed anthem, with abrupt shifts in musical style that never gelled, highlighting the dangers of mixing clashing genres without a clear strategy.
Tayyar Hain had a significant context; it was the first PSL where all matches were held on Pakistani soil, a moment deserving of a monumental anthem. Instead, it got a track where every artist sounded like they were recording in separate rooms for separate songs. Arif Lohar’s folk energy clashed with Asim Azhar’s pop sensibility, which clashed with Ali Azmat’s rock instincts. Nobody was wrong individually. Together, they were incoheren.t.
More stars don’t make a better song. This lesson will be ignored repeatedly going forward.
PSL 6 (2021)- Groove Mera | Naseebo Lal, Aima Baig, Young Stunners
Verdict: The Most Controversial Three Minutes in Pakistani Music History
No anthem has generated more discourse, more outrage, more memes, more eventual redemption, and more lasting confusion than Groove Mera. It is a sociological event wrapped in a music video.
When it dropped in February 2021, the reaction was swift and merciless. Shoaib Akhtar, a man not exactly known for his restraint, went on YouTube and declared it the worst song he’d heard in PSL history and said it scared his children. He was not alone. The anthem became the most-disliked PSL track on YouTube, while also being the most-liked. It ended up the second-most-viewed PSL anthem ever, because hate-watching is still watching.
Here’s the complicated truth: the song was genuinely strange. Naseebo Lal’s folk vocals, Young Stunners’ rap, and Aima Baig’s pop range were all competing for space in an EDM production no one asked for. The lyrics referenced COVID restrictions in ways that aged badly. “Aaj dekhe ga crowd mera groove TV pe”, the crowd will see my groove on TV ,is not exactly anthemic poetry.
And yet. A few years on, nostalgia has performed its usual alchemy. Fans who mocked it in 2021 now cite it as a point of comparison whenever a newer anthem disappoints them. In collective memory, Groove Mera has become weirdly beloved, the way you grow fond of a disaster you survived. Make of that what you will.
PSL 7 (2022)- Agay Dekh | Atif Aslam & Aima Baig
Verdict: A Genuine Comeback
This one worked. When Atif Aslam ,Pakistan’s most beloved contemporary voice, a man who could sing a telephone directory and get 10 million streams, showed up to headline the PSL 7 anthem, the league finally got out of its own way.
Agay Dekh had melody, it had energy, and crucially, it had a vocalist who sounded like he actually wanted to be there. Aima Baig, by now a PSL anthem veteran, complemented rather than competed. The song was forward-looking in spirit and competent in execution. It’s not in the Ali Zafar tier, but it’s solidly in the top half of the PSL anthem canon.
The real lesson of PSL 7: hire the right voice, trust them, don’t overcrowd the track.
PSL 8 (2023)- Sab Sitaray Humaray | Asim Azhar, Shae Gill, Faris Shafi
Verdict: The Forgettable One
The 2023 anthem’s most damning quality is that most fans genuinely cannot recall its lyrics twelve months later. Sab Sitaray Humaray had Shae Gill, a genuinely talented artist who deserved better material, and Asim Azhar, who had already appeared in a PSL anthem and probably should have had his fill. Faris Shafi’s rap segment was widely considered the weakest link, and fans who had just spent two years finding unlikely affection for Groove Mera found themselves admitting that Young Stunners in 2021 had at least left an impression.
The anthem was inoffensive, polished, and entirely hollow. It sounded like it had been focus-grouped until all the edges were gone; nothing remotely interesting remained.
PSL 9 (2024)- Khul Ke Khel | Ali Zafar & Aima Baig
Verdict: The Nostalgia Trap
Ali Zafar came back. Again. For the fifth time. And the results were exactly as mixed as you’d expect when a formula is being re-run long past its expiry date.
Khul Ke Khel tried to recapture the magic of 2016 and 2017 by reassembling similar ingredients. But nostalgia is not a creative strategy. Zafar borrowed elements from earlier anthems; fans quickly noticed—reacting not with delight, but with the deflated sense of watching a sequel made only for profit.
Notably, even the PSL’s own stakeholders were getting restless. Multan Sultans’ owner, Ali Tareen, publicly expressed his frustration with Zafar’s repeated selection, calling for other artists to be given a platform. He had a point. The league was beginning to feel like one man’s extended musical franchise rather than a showcase for Pakistan’s genuinely deep and diverse talent pool.
PSL 10 (2025)- X Dekho | Ali Zafar, Abrar-ul-Haq, Talha Anjum, Natasha Baig
Verdict: A Decade-Defining Anthem That Defined Nothing
For a milestone tenth season, X Dekho promised a celebration. What it delivered was a collision. Ali Zafar, yes, again, marking his fifth PSL appearance, was joined by Abrar-ul-Haq, Talha Anjum, and Natasha Baig in what became the anthem equivalent of too many cooks.
The criticisms were familiar by now: too many artists and too many genres awkwardly blended. Natasha Baig’s folk-rock vocals felt out of place alongside club-inspired beats, and Abrar-ul-Haq’s Punjabi segment felt like an isolated genre insertion, never fully integrating with the track’s pop or rap. Central lyric confusion also reflected the genre clash, leaving listeners unsure what the anthem was trying to be musically.
“Every single time, adding more stars makes it worse,” one fan summarised online. Another, more pointedly: “What’s the role of rap in a cricketing anthem?” These are questions the PCB has apparently never sat down to answer.
The anthem crossed a million Facebook views in 12 hours ,which sounds impressive until you remember that the PSL has grown enormously since 2016 and the bar for “viral” has moved accordingly.
PSL 11 (2026)- Khelenge Beat Pe | Atif Aslam, Aima Baig, Sabri Sisters, Daniya Kanwal
Verdict: Good Voices, Familiar Problems
Atif Aslam returns, and the internet predictably lost its mind in the best possible way. His is the kind of voice that makes even average material sound credible, and that instinct, finally getting a vocalist the public actually wants ,was the right one.
But here’s the honest problem with Khelenge Beat Pe: it is already being called “mixed” by fans, which in the PSL anthem ecosystem is the polite way of saying “we expected more.” The Sabri Sisters bring genuine cultural credibility and an interesting sonic dimension. Daniya Kanwal’s rap segment continues the PSL’s ongoing, somewhat baffling relationship with rap music in cricket anthems. Aima Baig, appearing for the fourth time, is, at this point, the institutional memory of PSL anthems, present at every turn, reliably competent, never quite the story.
One tweet from a fan said it plainly: “Pakistan Super League ,or Pepsi Super League?” That sentiment ,the creeping corporate takeover of what should be organic national enthusiasm ,is the undercurrent running through the anthem discourse every single year.
The Uncomfortable Verdict on All Eleven
Eleven years. Eleven anthems. Here’s what the data actually shows:
The PSL got lucky in years one and two. Ali Zafar delivered two anthems so good that the league’s musical identity was essentially established before it had figured out anything else. Everything since has been a varying degree of attempting to replicate that lightning, with diminishing returns and increasing committee interference.
The pattern is consistent and frankly embarrassing for a league of this scale: take two or three popular artists, add a rapper for youth appeal, assign a Pepsi-approved producer, and hope the result sounds like something other than a brand activation jingle. Sometimes it works (Agay Dekh). Often it doesn’t (X Dekho, Sab Sitaray Humaray). Occasionally, it creates accidental mythology (Groove Mera).
What’s never happened ,in eleven seasons ,is the PCB sitting down and asking: what do we actually want this anthem to say? Who are we making it for? What would Pakistan’s cricket anthem sound like if it weren’t being designed by a corporate committee?
Until those questions get honest answers, the PSL anthem will remain what it largely has been since 2018: a perfectly adequate commercial product that occasionally, accidentally, becomes something people actually care about ,and then is replaced the following February by something slightly worse.
Ab Khel Jamay Ga is still undefeated. It probably always will be.
