Former Pakistan all-rounder Shahid Afridi along with the mega stars like Andre Russell, Chris Gayle, Rashid Khan, and Brendon McCullum have been roped in as the icon players for various franchises in the Afghanistan Premier League T20.
Afridi was picked up by Paktia, Russell by Nangarhar, Gayle joined Balkh, and McCullum Kandahar, while the fifth team, Kabul, had national-team superstar Rashid Khan as their biggest signing. At least 34 overseas players are set to be part of the inaugural edition of the tournament, scheduled to be taking place between 5 October and 23 October at Sharjah Cricket Stadium. The draft was held on Monday, 10 September.
Looking forward to playing @APLT20official this year and representing the Paktia team. Congrats to @ACBofficials on launching their T20 League 👍🏽 #APLT20 https://t.co/zYEeqYG3ZP
— Shahid Afridi (@SAfridiOfficial) September 10, 2018
Players from England (Ravi Bopara, Sam Billings, Chris Jordan, Luke Wright, Laurie Evans, Tymal Mills), New Zealand (Luke Ronchi, Colin Munro, Mitchell McClenaghan), Australia (Ben Cutting, Ben Laughlin), Pakistan (Wahab Riaz, Sohail Tanveer, Mohammad Irfan, Faheem Ashraf, Iftikhar Ahmed, Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Hafeez), South Africa (Colin Ingram, Wayne Parnell, Cameron Delport), Sri Lanka (Thisara Perera), Bangladesh (Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiqur Rahim) and Ireland (Paul Stirling) will be featuring in the tournament.
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The Associate nations are represented by Ryan ten Doeschate of the Netherlands, Nepal’s Sandeep Lamichhane, local boy Mohammad Naveed and Scottish batsman Calum McLeod. As for the Afghan national heroes, Mohammad Shahzad went to Paktia, Mujeeb Ur Rahman to Nangarhar, Mohammad Nabi to Balkh and Asghar Afghan to Kandahar.
During the event, Afghanistan Cricket Board CEO Shafiqullah Stanikzai said, “Each owner is supposed to have a Minimum $5,55,000 and Maximum $700,000/- player purse. The Franchise will have an additional purse of $145,000/- to purchase 3 players and if there is an unspent amount after picking the entire team, the same can be retained.”
Very excited to have been picked by Kabul to play in the inaugural edition of @APLT20official from 5th – 21st October 2018 at Sharjah.#APLT20 #APLDraft #WeyarDaAfghanano pic.twitter.com/gjpzo3taig
— Rashid Khan (@rashidkhan_19) September 10, 2018
The franchises will also be allowed to replace a player in case of injury on the approval of the APL Governing Council. The replacement player must be from the pool of players available from the draft list.
The squads for each franchise participating in the APLT20 will be decided after the other draft rounds are completed. Each team must have a minimum of 17 players and a maximum of 20.
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Talking to Khaleej Times about the draft, Rashid said, “It is an honour to play in your own league. Now is the time for youngsters from Afghanistan to come forward and show their ability. It will be an opportunity for them to share the dressing room and also rub shoulders with the likes of Shahid Afridi, Chris Gayle and others. If you see the BPL [Bangladesh Premier League], IPL [Indian Premier League] and Big Bash [League, Australia], these leagues helped their countries do well. They got a lot of youngsters from those leagues. So we are hoping it does the same for the Afghanistan youngsters.”
