January 08, 2022
LAHORE: Team officials looking to further boost their squads for the seventh edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) on Saturday participated in the supplementary and replacement player draft for the tournament through a virtual session.
Franchises submitted their partial replacements for the players unavailable for the initial few matches.
The 2020 edition’s champions Karachi Kings, as decided through a random draw, had the first supplementary pick, and they added Sahibzada Farhan, winner of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Domestic Cricketer of the Year Award 2021, to their squad.
The Lahore Qalandars, who had the second pick in the first round, picked pacer Mohammad Imran Randhawa.
In the next four picks Islamabad United added pacer Musa Khan, who played for them in 2019, 2020 and 2021 seasons; Quetta Gladiators reserved their pick; Multan Sultans picked England pacer David Willey; and, Peshawar Zalmi picked Mohammad Umar.
The second round followed a reverse order in which Peshawar Zalmi, the winners of the second edition of PSL, going first, reserved their pick.
Defending champions Multan Sultans picked Rizwan Hussain, 2019 edition’s Quetta Gladiators picked Ghulam Mudassar, two-time champions Islamabad United plucked Zahir Khan, Lahore Qalandars further boosted their pace department with the addition of Akif Javed and Karachi Kings bagged Jordan Thompson.
It is pertinent to mention here that each franchise was allowed to pick a maximum of one foreign cricketer out of the two supplementary picks.
Making the most of the opportunity to replace those players who were partially unavailable in PSL 7, Multan Sultans replaced Odean Smith with wicketkeeper-batter Johnson Charles and Rovman Powell with Dominic Drakes.
Quetta Gladiators replaced Naveen-ul-Haq with Luke Wood, James Vince with Will Smeed, Jason Roy with Shimron Hetmyer, and Afghanistan’s Noor Ahmed with Ali Imran.
Karachi Kings replaced Pakistan U19 captain Qasim Akram, who is on national duty in the West Indies because of the ICC Men’s U19 Cricket World Cup, with left-arm spinner Mohammad Taha Khan and reserved their pick for Tom Abell.
Qasim’s teammate Zeeshan Zamir was replaced with Mohammad Huraira, who had a terrific debut first-class season stroking a triple-century and finishing as the highest run-getter in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy.
The unavailability of English wicketkeeper-batter Phil Salt for a few initial matches saw Ben Dunk reuniting with Lahore Qalandars.
Peshawar Zalmi and Quetta Gladiators reserved their one supplementary pick each, while all five franchises, except Quetta Gladiators, reserved their picks in the replacement round.
The final team roster after all the rounds concluded looked like this:
Islamabad United
Karachi Kings
Lahore Qalandars
Multan Sultans
Peshawar Zalmi
Quetta Gladiators