Confidence and trust behind Islamabad United's success, says owner

DUBAI: When Islamabad United was created last year ahead of the inaugural edition of Pakistan Super League, many didn’t consider the team as a real threat to opponents. The team management was ridiculed by fans on social media for picking some “discarded players”, but there was something which didn’t allow anyone to feel let down and this something was the “confidence and trust”, according to team owner Ali Naqvi.

Naqvi, an investment banker by profession, says he bought the franchise Islamabad United for the Pakistan Super League because he believes that Islamabad is representative of everyone in Pakistan.

“Islamabad represents the nation, it is representative of everyone in Pakistan. We had so many names in our minds like Federals and Capitals, but we picked United because this represents unity of our nation,” he told Geo.tv in an exclusive chat on the sidelines of the opening match of PSL 2017 on Thursday.

To surprise many, Islamabad picked likes of Khalid Latif, Mohammad Sami, Saeed Ajmal in the team ahead of the inaugural edition of Pakistan Super League. Many considered those players as discarded at that time, and Islamabad United’s brain trust was questioned by many on social media.

However, the management remained defiant and showed trust on the players who later delivered and took Islamabad to victory in the first edition of Pakistan Super League.

Naqvi says all the players chosen by the team were top performers of domestic cricket and later their picks were proved correct.

“We picked performers of our domestic Cricket like Khalid Latif and Sharjeel and Sami. Saeed Ajmal was out of action but he’s an experienced bowler and we knew that experience would matter,” he said.

“I believe that you need to give confidence and show trust on your players and let them play their game instead of bowing down to the pressure of criticism,” added Naqvi.

Naqvi says that he joined the Pakistan Super League with an idea of supporting Pakistan Cricket and that’s why he picked the best brains of cricket like Wasim Akram, Dean Jonnes and Tausif Ahmed to help players from Pakistan.

And, now with the same logic of helping Pakistan Cricket, Ali Naqvi has bought a franchise in Hong Kong’s T20 League.

 “As you know that most of the players there [in Hong Kong] are from Pakistan, so we picked one team there as well, because it would help Pakistan Cricketers as well, we would take players from Pakistan to there as well,” he said

Replying to a question, Ali Naqvi said that he is not talking to foreign players about coming to Lahore for the final, as according to him, it is too early for them to talk about this.

“It is too early at the moment, to talk to players about coming to Pakistan and play the final, we have to clear several stages before qualifying for the final, so we are now focused on our first step, which is to clear the first hurdle,” he said.

“We don’t want to distract players with such talks at the moment, we will talk about it once we are in the final,” Naqvi added.