The Pakistan Super League is back, and its definitely bigger and better this time around. As the PSL Draft took place a few hours ago, the investors of the various franchises along with the team coaches and mentors were involved in a bidding war over the huge list of players who were named in the auction.
The tournament already boasts of big international names such as Chris Gayle, Andre Russell, Shane Watson, Dwayne Smith, Nathan McCullum and many more such stars.
In the auction which took place today, the players were categorized into five groups – Diamond, Silver, Platinum, Gold and Emerging.
The Platinum group of players were picked first, after which were the diamond, gold, silver and emerging groups. The rule for the Emerging group of players is that each player must be under 23 years of age as on January 1st, 2017.
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As far as the rules of the draft were concerned, each team had to pick 16 players and have a quota of 5 international players in their squad. There were 74 players in the Silver category, 33 players in the Diamond category and 28 in Platinum
The league is set to kick-off in February 2017 in the United Arab Emirates with the final taking place in the Gadaffi Stadium in Lahore.
The tournament will consist of 5 teams namely Islamabad United, Karachi Kings, Lahore Qalandars, Peshawar Zalmi and Quetta Gladiators. Islamabad United are the defending champions having won the 2016 edition after defeating the Quetta Gladiators in the final of the tournament.
During the draft, Shahid Afridi came up to the stage and handed over the captaincy of the Peshawar Zalmi side to Darren Sammy. He mentioned that Sammy was not treated well by the West Indies cricket board and he deserved to be treated better and spoke about what a great leader he is.
Here is the summary of the Draft which took place earlier today.
| Team | Islamabad | Karachi | Lahore | Peshawar | Quetta |
| Player | Misbah-ul-Haq,Shane Watson,Andre Russell,Sharjeel Khan,Mohammed Irfan,Samuel Badree,Mohammed Sami,Khalid Latif,Brad Haddin,Ben Duckett ,Shadab Khan,Sam Billings (R),Saeed Ajmal (R),Asif Ali (R),Rumman Raees (R),Imran Khalid.(R) | Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Amir, Ravi Bopara, Kumar Sangakarra, Imad Wasim, Babar Azam, Ryan Mclaren, KhurramManzoor, Kashif Bhatti, Dwayne Smith, Mahela Jayawardene, Sohail Khan (R), Shahzaib Hasan (R), Saifullah Bangash (R), | Brendon McCullum, Sunil Narine, Umar Akmal, Sohail Tanvir, Dwayne Bravo, Yasir Shah, Anton Devcich, Mohammed Rizwan, Cameron Delport, Fakhar Zaman, Billawal Bhatti, Grant Elliot, Shaun Tait, Azhar Ali (R), Aamer Yamin (R), Zafar Gohar (R) | Shahid Afridi, Eoin Morgan, Wahab Riaz, Shakib Al Hasan, Darren Sammy, Anwar Ali, Chris Jordan, Tamim Iqbal, Kamran Akmal, Iftikhar Ahmed, Harris Sohail, Alex Hales, Shahzad Mohammadi, Sohaib Maqsood (R), Junaid Khan (R), Imran Khan Jr (R) | Kevin Pietersen, Sarfraz Ahmed, Ahmed Shehzad, Luke Wright, Carlos Braithwaite, Mohammad Hafeez, Tymal Mills, Umar Gul, Zulfiqar Babar, Mohammad Nawaz, David Willey, RovmanPowell., Bismillah Khan, Mohammad Nabi (R), Asad Shafiq (R), Saad Nasim (R) |
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