LAHORE: Emphasising that merit will be the top priority in team selection, the owner of Pakistan Super League’s newly-inducted Sialkot team Hamza Majeed on Saturday said that his franchise will look to pick top players from Pakistan, and then Australia.
“There will be no ‘Parchi’ system in our team, the decisions will be taken on merit and our first priority will be to pick the best players from the current Pakistan team and then to give preference to Australian players. [Moreover] Australian coaches have the best talent, and if we cannot get any best coach from Pakistan we will search for the best one from Australia,” Hamza, the owner of OZ Group, said during his first media conference after purchasing the Sialkot team at the office of the Sports Journalists Association Lahore at the National Hockey Stadium.
Hamza, who owns a business in Australia, purchased the Sialkot franchise for a whopping Rs1.85 billion at a glitzy PSL teams auction in Islamabad on Thursday.
Responding to a query regarding his team’s target in their maiden appearance in the forthcoming PSL 11 starting in late March, Hamza sounded categorical.
“We have joined the PSL to win it, and we are making a comprehensive plan to [achieve] this target.”
Answering a question whether he had any concerns about making profit after buying the franchise at an expensive price, Hamza said, “Put profit and loss aside, overall the [PSL] auction presented a positive image of Pakistan across international market and among the country’s diaspora.”
After the addition of two new teams — Hyderabad and Sialkot — the total number of participating teams in the PSL has reached eight, expanding the level of profit to manifold against Rs5 billion earned reportedly, by all six franchises in 2023.
The Hyderabad team was bought by SKF, a United States-based franchise, for Rs1.75 billion.
Interestingly, there is a great difference between Sialkot and Hyderabad prices and that of Quetta Gladiators, which is PSL’s lowest cost franchise retained by its owner for just Rs360 million.
However, all the eight franchises will have equal share from the 95 per cent of the total income to be received by them from the central pool of income at the end of the event. The remaining five per cent will go into the PCB account.
The entire amount to be received from the eight franchisees, which is estimated to be Rs6.5 billion, will also go into PCB’s account.
On whether his Sialkot team will miss their home venue — Jinnah Stadium — like Quetta and Peshawar Zalmi teams during the PSL games, Hamza said the revival of Jinnah Stadium would be the priority of both the PCB and his franchisee.
The second home ground of Sialkot would be Iqbal Stadium, Faisalabad.
“It is unfortunate that the Jinnah Stadium which hosted several international matches in the past had turned into a desert,” he lamented.
When asked what inspired him to pick Sialkot as his franchise, Hamza said Allama Iqbal, the Poet of the East, was born in Sialkot and this was one of the main factors which urged him to pick that city.
Furthermore, he said, Sialkot had produced some world-class cricketers for Pakistan, most prominently great Zaheer Abbas. “Our franchise would like him to be with us and play a [suitable] role for our team.”
Replying to a question, Hamza signalled that they would consider ‘Sialkot Shaheens’ as the name of their franchise, “because Iqbal’s poetry contains some special messages for the youth whom he termed Shaheen”.
